


Scars

by ametis



Series: Scars [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Bottom Hannibal, Bottom Will Graham, Dom/sub Undertones, Facials, First Time, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, PWP, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Rimming, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:48:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8212822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ametis/pseuds/ametis
Summary: Will has a secret: the scar on his stomach arouses him. Hannibal finds out.





	1. Chapter 1

Will is not sure how smart it is to drink this much after months of abstinence, but his body doesn’t hurt anymore and the whiskey is rich and burns with every sip. Will finds himself drinking more than he should, more than Hannibal approves of; the soft scratch of pencil on paper stops for a moment when Will downs the rest of his drink in one gulp, but Hannibal keeps quiet where he sits in the big armchair next to the bookshelf.  
  
Will is too tired to start arguing about it, so he resists the urge to refill his glass and puts it on the coffee table.

They are sitting in the living room after a long rainy day, lights dimmed except for the bright lamp where Hannibal is drawing. Will should get up and go upstairs; he hates falling asleep on the couch. It usually means he won’t be able to fall asleep as easily in his bed. But his body doesn’t want to move; it feels molten, sluggish, too hot.

Will sinks further into the couch and closes his eyes. The healed stab wound on his shoulder itches, so he tries to concentrate on his breath instead, on the scratch of pencil on paper.

Behind closed eyes he sees Hannibal's study in Baltimore, the fireplace glowing golden and casting long shadows on the walls. Hannibal sits in his armchair, looking up at him. A fusing of what was and what could have been. Slowly, it all fades to black until the sound of Hannibal's pencil is the only thing Will is aware of. In the state between sleep and wakefulness, the sound becomes something else, something that grows louder with each passing second. Will’s heart beats faster, his breath coming out in short bursts. The sound stretches, surges, morphs into a roar –

"Will."

Will jumps to his feet before he's fully aware of where he is. Doziness and alcohol pull at his balance; the almost-dream makes him stumble forward and he nearly trips over the coffee table. But Hannibal is standing before him now, solid and strong, and he doesn't falter. His arm shoots out to steady Will, brushing across Will’s stomach in the process.

A moan falls from Will's mouth, loud and clear in the silence around them.

Will presses his lips together, too late, and steps away from Hannibal as quickly as he can manage. His ears keep ringing for a moment longer, then the dizziness vanishes. In its wake Will feels his neck and face heat up.

"It's late," Hannibal says, watching him with that intense quietness he's so good at. Usually it means he’s figuring something out; Will hopes it’s just the late hour showing on his features this time.

"I uh, thanks," Will says. He hides his face in his hands for a moment, exhales loudly, then mumbles, "night."

"Good night, Will."

Will leaves Hannibal to check the windows and doors, to turn off the lights. He goes upstairs and splashes cold water in his face. By the time he's washed the taste of whiskey from his mouth, his hands start shaking. There is nothing to distract him from the thoughts circling in his head. His mind is on fire; one thought igniting a hundred others. He lies awake for hours. When his eyes feel dry and itchy and he physically can't keep them open anymore, he is sure of one thing: Hannibal knows.

-

They manage to escape as if the world is theirs to conquer and they are unbreakable. The blood trail they left leads Jack to nothing. If he had another Will Graham they could follow them to the house they broke into, the cars they stole and left in deserted streets, their zigzag-shaped escape route. But what Jack has is a lonely cliff full of their blood, unforgiving cold water, and no one who _sees_ Hannibal Lecter. No one who can anticipate his strength, the life soaring through him when he fights.

In the first weeks after the escape, Will eats and sleeps and often wonders how long it took Jack to find the Great Red Dragon, if Dolarhyde was a feast to any creature drawn by the smell of blood. Will wonders how Jack’s reputation has suffered. If he’s still yelling out orders from his office, voice carrying through the white glass landscape of the BAU. At times his imagination runs riot, all the what-ifs laid out before his mind's eye until he has to force himself to stop thinking about it.

The house they stay in now is similar to Hannibal’s house in Baltimore; dark floors, high ceilings, expensive furniture. Everything is covered in sheets, waiting for them. Hannibal pulls the sheet from one armchair at the end of the first week. Dark green upholstery with brighter, almost unnoticeable stripes across it. The gold of the armrests and legs runs up all along the frame, the embellishments curling around each other. “If they find us, this is where I’ll leave you,” Hannibal says.

Will feels an icy weight in his stomach, words in his throat. He doesn’t say _they won’t_ like he knows, marrow-deep. He watches Hannibal place the chair in the corner of the living room that is furthest away from the door – a vantage point – and sees himself tied to it.

-

For the first time since their escape, Hannibal moves smoothly around the kitchen. His hands are sure in what they’re doing, his body solid. It reminds Will so much of Baltimore, of Abigail, of Alana and Jack that he has to sit down. It’s too early in the morning to let his mind wander back to their past, so instead he occupies himself with drinking his morning coffee.

“Hungry?” Hannibal says, pointing at the pan. He leans down to check on some other dish in the oven and his white shirt pulls taut across his back. It’s almost translucent, allowing Will to see that there’re no bandages around his torso anymore. Hannibal straightens and Will looks down at his mug, says, “You made pancakes.”

The corners of Hannibal’s mouth lift up. “Taste this, please,” he says and holds out a cup and a spoon for him. “It’s a new recipe I am trying out for dinner.”

The smooth sauce is tart and yet sweet somehow. “It’s delicious,” Will says.

“Isn’t it?” Hannibal smiles.

Will watches him move around the kitchen to finish up their breakfast, his rolled up sleeves reveal sun-tanned skin.

“You’re in an awfully good mood today,” Will says, irritated by lack of sleep. The back of his neck heats up when he remembers the reason behind his tossing and turning.

“I am,” Hannibal says. He puts the last of the dishes in the sink and places two beautifully decorated plates on the kitchen island.

“Why exactly?” Will says, then mumbles his thanks.

Hannibal sits next to him and smiles down at his own plate. “Inspiration has the power to influence us tremendously.”

Hannibal spends the rest of the morning in the kitchen. Will listens to him work from the couch in the living room where he reads. The book is about plate tectonics and after two pages he has to fight to keep his eyes open. He makes it through another half page, which is when Hannibal puts on music. It’s soft, barely audible from the living room; a piano piece Will vaguely remembers. It coaxes him to put the book away and lie down.

He wakes up two hours later, thirsty but rested, a blanket draped over him. The house is quiet. A post-it on the fridge tells him that Hannibal is out for groceries.

Will drinks a glass of water at the kitchen sink, then goes back to the living room. In one corner, the chair Hannibal put out for him gleams in the sunlight. Usually, Will doesn’t look at it, or doesn’t have the privacy to look. With Hannibal in the house, the armchair occupies one corner of his mind which, just like with the actual chair, he tries to ignore.

Now, his hands start sweating as he takes one step closer to it. He looks at the golden embellishments, the soft cushion. Nobody ever sat in this chair, he is certain. It looks comfortable, too, a sturdy thing of beauty that’s not meant for people like him.

Slowly, he takes another step forward, but the part of him that pulled Hannibal over the cliff makes him tear his gaze away.

He looks out of the window instead. It’s sunny outside but the trees are showing the first traces of autumn. Two weeks ago, Hannibal was sunbathing in the garden, now it’s too cold to go out without a jacket, especially in the mornings.

Will watches the trees sway gently in the wind and tries to ignore the tug in his gut that’s been there since he’s woken up from the coma with a smile on his stomach. It’s an ugly truth that he can’t face when he’s sober or fully awake, but that moment from last night is a loop behind his eyes. Hannibal’s hand on his stomach where the scar still feels like a weight pulling his skin taut.

After Hannibal left him with it, Will grew so used to the extra weight that it took Molly’s soft touch to show him how much he thought about the scar and how little he touched it. How the thought of anybody touching it made him tremble in disgust and anger. He didn't allow Molly to touch it after that, especially during sex.

Will clears his throat and steps away from the windows. There’s no use to dwell on thoughts he’ll keep buried deeper than Hannibal’s knife was.

Hannibal comes back while Will is still trying to calm down. He has a brown paper bag in his arms and stops in the hallway when he sees Will. “Is everything alright?” he asks.

“Yes,” Will says. He follows Hannibal into the kitchen and helps with the salad. For a while the task distracts him, but when he is done and has nothing else to do with his hands, the thoughts come back and keep nagging at him until his fingers start twitching. In the end, he gives up trying to distract himself with Hannibal around. “I’m going for a run,” he says.

Usually he goes in the mornings, four times a week. He sticks to the route that starts at the back of their house, a lonely winding road that leads into the woods. At 6 AM he has it all to himself.

After the run and shower, dinner is ready.

Hannibal pours a generous amount of sauce on his plate, fill his glass with wine. He is dressed in a beige three-piece suit that emphasizes the breadth of his shoulders. With the dimmed lights and the candles on the table, his face looks soft around its edges.

Will takes a big gulp of the wine before he even looks at the food.

“Careful,” Hannibal says. “You’re not used to it yet.”

Will feels Hannibal’s hand on his stomach, a phantom touch. Last night started like this; one glass too many after dinner and then–

Will puts his glass down and watches him until Hannibal is content with the napkin on his lap and looks up. Will holds his gaze, barely resisting the urge to reach for his glass again. For a moment he is thrown by this new approach; Hannibal usually keeps him in suspense and makes him work for it. “Tell me what you're thinking, Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal smiles at him, amused. “There is nothing to tell,” he says. He takes the first bite and his eyes close for a moment, savoring the taste. He keeps quiet until Will considers dropping the subject, but more than the fear of Hannibal knowing, Will hates the insulting silence he offers. As if Will doesn’t know him well enough to know Hannibal is suspecting something.

Will keeps his mouth shut and waits him out.

Finally, Hannibal says, “I keep wondering, are you protective of all your scars, Will, or just the one I gave you?”

“Ah,” Will grins down at his plate. “You have to be more specific, you gave me a couple.”

Hannibal looks at him. “Your food is getting cold,” he says, then after Will tastes the meat he adds, “I’m referring to the one on your abdomen. Does it still bother you, does it hurt?”

“It doesn’t _hurt_ ,” Will exhales. “This is delicious, by the way.” He feels like he is confessing to Hannibal that he liked killing Hobbs all over again, he feels stripped away from all the little victories he’s gained over Hannibal, if they can be called that.

Hannibal studies him for a moment. “If it’s not physical, it’s psychological.”

“Continue.”

“I smelt excitement on you last night,” Hannibal says. They eat in silence for a moment, then Hannibal searches Will’s eyes and holds his gaze. “It arouses you to know you are the only one I scarred and allowed to live,” Hannibal says.

Will tries to remember the lies he’s told himself and cling to them, but hearing Hannibal say out loud what Will knows to be true makes his heart throb in his chest and all the excuses he’s told himself fall apart. His body is vibrating with a mixture of anger and excitement, both of which he tries to ignore. One part of what Hannibal is saying doesn’t feel quite right, though.

“You didn’t allow anything,” Will says, cold. “I took it.”

“Yes,” Hannibal says, smiling. “Yes, you did.”

They finish their dinner in silence, Hannibal no doubt sorting away this new information about Will, especially the loud silence Will has to offer instead of denial.

Afterwards, Hannibal wipes down the counter and pours them another glass of wine. Will has spent so much energy watching Hannibal during dinner and being aware of his presence that he feels exhausted by the time he sits down on the couch.

Hannibal is facing the bookshelf when he says, “Have you ever touched it for specific reasons?”

“Such as?”

“Comfort?” Hannibal waits. “Sex?”

Will laughs, a short, ugly sound that stumbles out of his mouth. He remembers a dream and waking up with his hand on his stomach, his cock hard. He remembers the shame he felt. “No,” he says. “I had a dream once, but no.” Will remembers a month-long non-conversation with Molly, mostly in the middle of the night, right after they tried again and Will had to stop, his cock rock-hard but his mind only giving him Hannibal’s voice and Hannibal’s face.

Hannibal comes closer. “Does it bother you that I wasn’t the one who cleaned it and stitched it back together?” He puts his glass on the coffee table, towering above Will. “Do you resent your body for how sensitive it made that scar?”

Lying to Hannibal is not as easy as lying to himself, so Will doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head in the hope that he can clear it. He feels helpless against Hannibal’s overwhelming presence in the room, his wish to know every last thing about Will and occupy every one of his thoughts. As if that’s not true already.

“Did your wife know what the scar meant to you?”

“Stop,” Will breathes. He gets up from the couch, walks to the bookshelf. His hands shake inside his pockets. The words at the back of his throat get stuck there when Hannibal comes to stand before him.

“Would you allow me to touch it?”

Heat gathers in Will’s groin, makes him bite at his own mouth. The tension in the room is like a living thing, crowding around him until it’s pressing on his chest, all around him. He doesn’t look at Hannibal as he pulls his shirt from his pants and unbuttons it. When he’s done, the scar is peeking between his open shirt; a crooked line, light pink and ugly. Not how Hannibal usually does things, no patience and design for Will’s body, just betrayal and pain.

Hannibal pulls Will’s shirt gently aside, the back of his hand comes to rest low on Will’s stomach, brushing against the hair there. Will stares at it, because it’s easier than looking at Hannibal’s face or his eyes, so he stares at Hannibal’s hand on his stomach, at how dark Hannibal’s skin looks compared to his. Hannibal’s fingers move slightly as if to drag him out of his thoughts, but all they do is make Will’s cock thicken.

They stand in silence, unmoving, until Will has to look up at Hannibal. That’s when he feels Hannibal’s thumb drag across the scar. His skin is rough, calloused, and Will jerks away, panting.

The darkness in Hannibal’s eyes is endless. Will watches him closely; sees Hannibal’s chest moving quicker than before, a strain around his mouth as he steps forward and kneels before Will, looking up at him.

Will’s legs feel like jelly. He inhales loudly, says, “Oh,” and grabs the bookshelf for support.

Apparently, Hannibal sees that as an answer. He leans forward, presses his open mouth to Will’s scar, and Will groans louder than he did when Hannibal put the scar on his skin. He is thankful that Hannibal moves away almost instantly.

“Sit, please,” Hannibal says, probably sensing how unsteady Will’s legs are. If he’s aware of Will’s erection, he doesn’t show it.

Will flops down on the couch, somewhat relieved, then has to clutch at it as Hannibal manhandles him into position; Will is pulled down until his ass is at the edge of the cushions, his legs spread wide so Hannibal’s shoulders have room between them. Will’s cock jumps at the eagerness in Hannibal’s movements, the urgency behind them. Hannibal doesn’t stop to ask, must smell it on him, that this is exactly what Will wants.

Then Hannibal puts his mouth on him again and Will has to close his eyes.

Hannibal licks along his scar, places soft kisses on it. Even though the touches are feather-light, they set Will’s skin on fire and bring the scar to life.

Will remembers Molly’s reassurances during that month and his own bitter frustration. He felt betrayed by his own body, once again, and the more he’d tried to avoid thinking about the scar, about waking up hard with his hand on it, the louder the thoughts became.

As if sensing his distraction, Hannibal stops and searches Will’s eyes. He would love to hear it, Will is sure, every detail of it.

This, whatever it is, is easier than talking it out.

"Not breaking,” Will says even though he feels like he is going to shatter into a million pieces if Hannibal so much as breathes on the scar. His cock is wet and painfully hard in his pants. He doesn’t dare touch it.

Hannibal inhales loudly and smiles, his mouth deep red and slick with spit. “No expensive china,” he agrees, pressing a hard, open-mouthed kiss to the scar. One that would’ve made Will’s legs give out if he had been standing.

Will’s hands shoot up and grab Hannibal’s head, twisting in his hair, a cry falls from his lips. “Stop,” he whispers, but when Hannibal tries to do so, Will holds his head right where it is, until his body starts shaking, the skin around the scar oversensitive. He feels like he could come like this, or at least shiver on the edge for hours.

The thought that Hannibal might do that to him brings him abruptly close to climax. Hannibal would enjoy that. Taking him apart bit by bit, just how he took apart his mind.

Will snaps out of his thoughts when he feels Hannibal’s hand rubbing between his legs, his teeth closing around flesh and biting down on the edge of the scar. “Hannibal,” Will gasps, terrified for a fraction of a second, then his hips jerk up into Hannibal’s hand and he is coming. His chest shakes, every muscle in his body straining, until it all fades away and he is left panting and staring up at the ceiling.

When Hannibal presses one last kiss to his scar, Will’s whole body jerks. “Stop,” he gasps, this time actually meaning it.

Hannibal smiles at him and carefully sits up. He doesn’t touch the scar, or Will’s softening cock which Will is thankful for; his body feels overused and sensitive, like it might burst any moment.

“Go take a shower,” Hannibal says. His hair is a mess from Will running his hands through it, his mouth crimson.

Will can’t stop looking at it.


	2. Chapter 2

Will’s chest is burning when he reaches the large tree trunk that blocks the muddy path in the woods. This is where he usually makes a turn and heads back home, but today he stops, puts his hands on his knees and breathes. His body is hot, the muscles in his legs and arms buzz; a sensation that usually settles in his limbs after completing the other half of the route. Evidently, he overexerted himself this morning.

For a moment, there is nothing but the sound of his breath, loud in the silence of the woods, then his body responds to the pause in exertion and his heartbeat slows, as does his breathing. 

When he straightens the burning sensation in his chest is gone. 

Beyond the tree trunk, the path disappears into the shadows of the trees. If Will were to follow it, he’d end up in the town closest to them, the one with the grocery store and the gas stop. He could risk it this early in the morning; the town is still asleep. 

But the thought makes his fingers tremble, so he shakes it off. 

He reminds himself that all he has to do is eat and sleep and run. The simplicity of this life keeps his brain quiet and peaceful, as if a piece that’s been missing for a long time has finally found its place. He is unwilling to trade the silence for answers, so instead of searching for that piece and taking it apart, he accepts it with open arms and basks in it. 

A distant rumble of thunder pulls him out of his thoughts. It’s time to head back. 

Their property is surrounded by a line of trees that sway in the wind by the time Will reaches it. Behind them the white facade of their house is stark in the grey morning light, the windows on the ground floor shining golden. 

Will spots Hannibal looking out of the kitchen window, a bowl in his hands which he places aside when he sees Will. “You’re back just in time,” Hannibal says, holding the back door open for Will and looking at the gloomy sky where a flash of light goes off right then. It’s followed by thunder a couple of seconds later and Will hurries inside, closing the door behind him.

“Breakfast will be ready in ten minutes,” Hannibal says as he walks back to the stove.

The scent of coffee and bacon makes Will’s mouth water. He nods, walks up close to Hannibal until his chest almost brushes Hannibal’s arm. 

Hannibal doesn’t stop whisking the eggs, but he slows down, his features settling into that almost non-existent smile that somehow still lights up his eyes. 

“Smells good,” Will says. He reaches for the bowl of fruit to take a piece of apple. “I’ll be down in five.”

The corners of Hannibal’s mouth lift some more and Will’s thoughts wander back to two days ago, to Hannibal touching his scar. 

He still can’t forget how well-used Hannibal’s mouth looked afterwards. 

-

The rain lasts for days and brings a sudden drop of temperature with it. Will feels the change in his shoulder first; a dull ache that makes his fingers shake if he doesn’t stretch in the mornings. But the cluster of damaged tissue in his shoulder gets used to the temperature quickly, so Will doesn’t stop running. He takes it slow on the mornings when his muscles are stiff from the night and the rain feels like ice. All the aches melt away as soon as he relaxes into the movements and he always feels better afterwards. 

Even though he can’t quite get rid of his dreams this way. 

They are all crimson and vivid, and when he wakes up panting and sweating now, it’s for entirely different reasons than it used to be. It surprises him since he’s never had a particularly strong sexual drive. He obviously enjoys sex, but he can count his past sexual partners on one hand. 

He’s not sure what that says about him, other than that most of the time fleeting eye contact and brutal honesty don’t result in second dates. Will doesn’t know what Molly saw in him. A stray perhaps, lost and in need of a warm home. 

Will’s first time was quick and messy. Ann was two years older than him, taking classes at community college. She smelt faintly of smoke and the peppermint chewing gum she tried to hide her habits with. When she pushed him onto the creaking chair in the corner of her room and climbed on his lap, her fingers were ice-cold on his neck. The only reason Will didn’t come instantly, was the shocking heat of her and the unfamiliar feeling of a condom. They kissed close-mouthed at first, then bolder. Will mimicked her movements until he couldn’t concentrate on anything other than coming. Their fathers knew each other, so Will saw her again, kissed her once more. 

There were two other women, in his twenties, nights he couldn’t quite piece together afterwards, but before Margot he hadn’t had sex in years. He fucked her as if he’d never get another chance, and after he worked through the consequences of sleeping with her, after the confusion he’d felt during that night faded, he was left with memories of her warm body, Alana’s lips on his and Hannibal’s voice in his head, all three of them moving for him. It was the most erotic night in his life. 

Will lies in bed, one hand on his cock, the other on the scar. One week later and it still feels sore from Hannibal’s mouth, or maybe Will’s imagining it. He’s been put together wrong, that’s for sure. One simple touch to it, makes his cock throb, so maybe he’s imagining the soreness, too. 

Either way, he's never allowed himself this before and it's making him shake. 

Hannibal’s face was pensive the morning after, his voice soft and earnest. _Did I overstep– ?_ Will shook his head but avoided Hannibal for the rest of the day anyway.

Will drags a thumb across the head of his cock, and nails across the scar. His cock twitches in pleasure and he does it again and again until he’s panting. He tries desperately to push all thoughts from his mind and just get it over with, but it’s a lost cause. Behind closed eyes he sees bodies moving, faces merging together, Hannibal’s teeth sinking into his skin. 

He comes with his mouth hanging open, throat working around a soundless cry. 

-

Will stands at the tree trunk and feels his hands shaking with all the things he doesn’t do and all the things he wants to do. He pants loudly, his breath fogging up in front of his face while the rain keeps falling. Some of the drops are hindered by the thick sea of branches above him and find their way to Will’s shoulders slowly.

He does the stretching exercises for his shoulder, hears Hannibal’s voice guiding him through them. Eventually, his breath evens out and the tension in his shoulder eases. When the cold starts to creep through his clothes, he finishes up. Hannibal’s voice fades away into the canopy of trees, leaving him with the silence of the woods. The loud pitter-patter of rain is the only thing to disturb it, until a whine cuts through it. 

It’s so familiar that at first Will doesn’t realize it’s real and not just an echo from his past. Then he remembers and ache blooms in his chest. Will is not at home. This isn’t Wolf Trap. His dogs aren’t here. 

He whirls around. 

The dog is standing still in the shadows a couple feet off the path, its white fur bright in the dark grey woods. It whines again and by the sound of it Will’s certain that it’s injured.  
He raises his hand slowly towards it but doesn’t move otherwise.

The dog lifts its head to sniff and reveals a black collar around its neck. If its thick clean coat isn’t enough to suggest an owner, the collar definitely is. 

Will stands rooted to the spot. 

What if the owner is close by? 

Will’s heart starts racing, the sudden change in rhythm all he can focus on for a moment. 

As if sensing his distress, the dog whines again, pulling Will form the daze he’s in. “Shh,” Will says. He takes a step forward, then another, all the while holding his hand out. He’s just going to take a look. He’s going to be cautious. If he hears somebody approaching he’s going to run. The dog won’t be able to follow, not by the way it’s holding its paw. Besides, they’re a long way from home. People won’t recognize him here.

Off the path, the ground is uneven. Will misjudges his step and is suddenly down on his hands and knees.

When he gathers himself enough to stand up, the dog is gone.

Back at the house, Hannibal looks at the angry red lines on his leg, the muddy disarray of his shorts and sweater, and puts his cup of coffee on the counter. “Go shower,” he says. 

After a quick shower, Hannibal ushers Will into the kitchen and makes him sit down with one pant leg rolled up. “Nothing major,” he says after inspecting the scratches again. He’s kneeling before Will, his hair falling across his forehead, soft-looking without all the products in it. 

“What happened?” 

“I – slipped,” Will says. 

Hannibal puts ointment on the scratches, hands warm and sure. “That should be enough,” he says. He hasn’t shaved yet and the faint stubble emphasizes the lushness of his mouth. 

Will swallows. “Thanks,” he says. 

-

The scalpel is almost completely hidden in Hannibal’s hand, only the end of it peeks out of his grasp and catches the light. 

Standing next to Hannibal’s desk in the living room, Will watches as Hannibal uses the scalpel to sharpen his pencil with measured movements. Hannibal presses the point of graphite briefly to his thumb after he is done and bends over his work again. In a matter of moments, the figure he is drawing stares at their opponent with wild eyes. The fine lines Hannibal puts on the paper create emotions so easily and vividly that Will finds the triumph and anguish on the men’s faces reflected inside himself. 

“Mephistopheles offering his service to Faust,” Hannibal explains without looking up from the paper. He draws the man’s eyebrows sharp, almost too theatrical. “Are you familiar with the story?” Hannibal asks, gesturing to a brown book on his desk. 

“No,” Will says. In the drawing one of the men has his back against a row of books, the other looks down at him, other-worldly and powerful. 

“Mephistopheles offers to give Faust any worldly pleasure and knowledge in exchange for his soul.”

“A pact with the devil.” Will picks up the book.

“Or an evil spirit,” Hannibal says. “Faust is suicidal and desperate to find answers to ancient questions.” He looks up at Will. “He spent all his life studying manmade disciplines and wants to understand God.” 

“You despise him,” Will says. 

Hannibal turns back to his work. “If Mephistopheles and all the worldly knowledge and pleasure can bring Faust a moment of true happiness, one that he would like to last forever, then his soul is not his anymore.” He adds shadows to Mephistopheles’ face. “As soon as he finds something worth living for, his soul belongs to Mephistopheles.” 

Will thumbs through the book, skims over a lengthy conversation between God and Mephistopheles. “Well, it’s a pact with the devil,” he says. He puts the book back on the desk and reaches for his glass of whiskey instead. After draining it, he checks on Hannibal’s progress. Mephistopheles looks like he is talking, his teeth gleaming. 

“Faust has to acknowledge the moment when it comes,” Hannibal says. “’Ah, stay a while! You are so lovely!’ Was there a moment that you wanted to last forever, Will?” 

Will’s mind wanders through his past, searching for a significant moment. It stops on events that are seen as indicators of a successful life; graduations, houses, marriages. Will sees himself in those situations as if he’s watching a stranger. At times, there are people around him, but their faces are blurry. They are a step ahead of him, or too far behind him, never in sync. An invisible wall separates him from the others until they become human-like shapes. He sees death, Abigail’s clear blue eyes, Molly’s soft smile, until everything is engulfed by the darkness in Hannibal’s eyes and Hannibal stares back at him proudly, black blood smeared on his face.

“No,” Will says. He turns in time to see Hannibal’s jaw work in annoyance he reins in too late. The corner of Will’s mouth lifts. He can’t hide the enjoyment this moment brings him, nor does he want to. Not with Hannibal watching him intently now. He wants, however, to see Hannibal bend.

“Is there something you want to ask me?” Hannibal tries again.

Will snorts. “Are _you_ the devil?” He puts his empty glass down and walks back and forth in the small space in front of Hannibal’s desk. His body is buzzing pleasantly, aware of all the possibilities laid out before him. 

“No,” Hannibal says, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “Not even an evil spirit.” 

“I don’t want to talk about good and evil,” Will says. They’ve been talking about that for years. 

“What do you want to talk about then?” 

Will resists making a face at the tone of Hannibal’s voice and the memory it evokes in him. Images of Hannibal’s office in Baltimore flicker before his eyes. “I’m curious to know what you think my question would be.” 

A beat of silence passes. 

Hannibal rolls the pencil back and forth on his desk with the tips of his fingers. The rest of him is still as a statue. “May I kiss you?” he asks, evidently dropping all pretense. It feels like a punch to the gut. “I believe you regret not initiating a kiss,” Hannibal adds and Will clenches his teeth at Hannibal’s ruthless honesty. He’s irritated by it, but only for a second. After all, he’s been wondering for days. And before that for months, really. 

The armchair Hannibal put out for him sits in the corner. With the lights dimmed it looks downright noble, the gold and green of it deep and warm. 

Will walks over to it and sits down, watches Hannibal take it all in. 

“Come here,” Will says. 

Hannibal stands abruptly, but walks over slowly. Will can see how others might feel intimidated by Hannibal’s height, the breadth of his shoulders, and more than that by the aura surrounding him. He is and always will be a predator. 

Will’s muscles strain at that thought, his eyes never leaving Hannibal’s. “Kneel,” he says, voice rough. If he leaves any room for insecurities, Hannibal will devour him. 

Hannibal doesn’t break eye contact as he goes down to his knees. 

The arousal Will feels at it is overwhelming. It’s nothing like the sudden surge he felt with others. It used to surprise him, made his blood boil within seconds when sex was in prospect. What he feels now has been simmering beneath his skin for days, building up, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. His chest raises and sinks quicker the more he thinks about what he wants. “Kiss me,” he says finally.

Hannibal moves forward until his sides press against the insides of Will’s knees, spreading Will’s legs further. His hands land on Will’s shoulders, hot through Will’s shirt, and Will is suddenly aware of the damp heat of his own body. The back of his neck is practically burning, his temples sweaty. 

Still, in the stifling tension he finds the strength to pull away, just when Hannibal’s face begins to blur because he is so close. Their mouths hover over each other, breath mingling, but a tiny tilt of Will’s head is enough to make Hannibal stop. “No,” Will says. He untucks his shirt and lifts it to reveal the scar. “Here.”

Hannibal’s gaze drops to his handiwork. An unreadable expression crosses his face before his features settle into careful blankness. Will used to mull over it during their sessions, surprised to find a blank canvas and for once enough room in his mind for himself. He has learnt that it’s not lack of emotions that evokes it, but an unyielding control over them. Right now, it's an attempt at controlling emotions; Will can see the quick jump of Hannibal’s pulse in his throat, betraying the calmness.

“Would you do it?” Hannibal asks, his gaze glued to Will’s scar. He is careful not to touch Will’s skin as he places his hands on Will’s hips.

Will blinks in confusion.

“Sell your soul for a moment of true happiness,” Hannibal clarifies. He bends over Will’s stomach and places a soft kiss to the scar, right  
in the middle of the pinkish line. 

Will exhales loudly. He expects Hannibal to stop and leave him like this. It would be the next logical step in this game they are playing. But Hannibal never plays by rules. Will knows this by now and yet, he is surprised when Hannibal drags his lips to one end of the scar to press a kiss at the edge of it, then does the same to the other side. 

Heat rushes through Will’s body, making his breath stutter. Behind closed eyes he sees Hannibal’s drawing. “Can Mephistopheles win?” he wonders. 

“He can’t,” Hannibal says. “It’s God’s plan.” His breath tickles Will’s stomach, makes him squirm in the chair. “He is sitting above his creation, moving around pawns. Mephistopheles is one of them.”

“A no-win situation.” 

“Yes,” Hannibal says, then presses his mouth to the scar again and opens it. Will’s cock pulses in response. A jolt of pleasure makes his leg jerk, knee bumping into Hannibal’s ribs. “S-sorry,” Will says. 

Hannibal catches his ankle and presses it against the chair leg. 

The unexpected pleasure Will feels at the firm grip must be showing on his face, because when Hannibal looks up his eyes are calculating. “May I?” Hannibal asks. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, folds it into a long thin strip and wraps it around the chair leg and one of Will’s ankles. 

Oh, God. 

Will nods and Hannibal ties it. He reaches for Will’s belt next, unbuckling it and yanking it from Will’s pants. The rough treatment makes Will moan, hips jerking once, twice into empty air. 

Hannibal ties his other ankle to the chair and takes everything in, a look of awe on his face. 

Hannibal who slaughtered everyone trying to catch a glimpse of his true self. Il Mostro di Firenze, Chesapeake Ripper, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Untouchable. No title from his past life reaches him here. He left all that behind so Will would know where to find him. He is on his knees. In awe. 

In love. 

He looks like a figment of Will’s imagination.

Curiously, Will lifts his hand and touches Hannibal’s face. In all the years they’ve known each other, Will has never touched Hannibal without the intention of hurting him. 

Until now.

Hannibal seems to realize this, too. His eyes close. “Oh,” he whispers as Will strokes his cheek. “Stay a while, you are so lovely.” When he opens his eyes, they are wet with unshed tears, and all Will can do is press their mouths together in a clash of lips and teeth. His body is caught between arousal and the deep ache in his chest he’s been trying to suffocate for months. He puts it all into the kiss, months of pent-up emotions. 

After a moment of complete stillness, Hannibal kisses back. He clutches at Will as if to make up for lost time. The kiss turns scorching when one of Hannibal’s hands drops to the scar and Will’s mouth falls open on a groan. Their tongues meet, pushing Will closer to the edge.

“Hannibal,” Will whispers against Hannibal’s mouth at the same time as Hannibal says, “May I–?”

“Yes,” Will groans. “Yes.” 

Hannibal blindly unfastens Will’s pants and reaches inside. His grip is strong and sure, fingers warm. Will’s eyes close in rapture. 

This won’t take long. Not with Hannibal bending down to lick at Will’s scar again. Every caress to it goes straight to Will’s cock and Hannibal is not someone to let up easily. He keeps stroking Will’s cock and licking at the scar until Will’s hips jerk involuntarily and he feels like he’s about to explode. The sensation intensifies when Hannibal sucks Will’s cock into his mouth. The hand he had around Will glides up to the scar, giving Will something to rub against. 

Will presses forward rudely. He’s almost there, _almost_. “Close,” he gasps in warning. He slowly becomes aware of Hannibal’s other arm flexing, hand hidden between his own legs, then he can’t stop looking at it. He can’t see much but the knowledge that Hannibal is reduced to pleasuring himself through his clothes is enough to push him over the edge. He comes with a gasp, legs jerking in their bonds. 

“Oh, God,” he whispers, forcing himself to keep his eyes open through his orgasm and watch Hannibal swallow. There is an unmistakable shudder in Hannibal’s body, the look of ecstasy on his face.

Afterwards, Hannibal uses the handkerchief to wipe his mouth and Will’s cock clean. Will has to help him stand and walk to the bathroom. He tries not to stare at the wet patch on Hannibal’s pants, but fails. 

Hannibal doesn’t seem to mind, though. An air of calmness surrounds him, one that Will feels spreading through his own body. Still, there are a hundred things he wants to says, yet nothing specific comes to mind. 

“Thank you, Will,” Hannibal says at the bathroom door, hands warm on Will’s shoulder. 

All the things they left unsaid can wait for a while, Will decides.


	3. Chapter 3

Will wakes up with one arm trapped under his body, numb. He groans and rolls to his back, his arm tingling painfully in the new position. 

It’s early, the light still grey outside, but at least he managed to rest for three hours. 

The reason for his short and fitful sleep is fuzzy at first, then comes to him all at once: Hannibal’s mouth on him, the falter in his gait when Will helped him to the bathroom, the pensive expression on his face when they said good night. 

They’ll have to talk about that sooner or later.

Will sits up. The numbness in his arm fades eventually, but the ache in his shoulder doesn’t, so he puts on a thick sweater instead of running clothes and steps out into the hallway. 

Hannibal’s bedroom is opposite his and to Will’s surprise the door is ajar. Through the crack, Will catches a glimpse of sun-kissed skin that has his heart leaping into his throat. Hannibal is standing before his wardrobe, picking out clothes, the muscles in his back and arms shifting. Below his shoulder blades, slightly off center, circular scar tissue marks his skin. 

Will is suddenly struck by the fact that he knows what it feels like to come in Hannibal’s mouth, but has never seen him fully naked. Hannibal sometimes leaves the first two buttons of his shirts undone, or rolls up his sleeves when preparing food, other than that he keeps his body hidden in fine fabric.

Will hurries downstairs and busies himself with making coffee. It will have to serve as breakfast today; his stomach protests at the mere thought of food. He is on his second cup by the time Hannibal comes down. 

“Good morning,” Hannibal says. He looks pleased to find Will at home.

Will watches him move around the kitchen, filling a cup with steaming coffee. “Morning,” he says, eventually. He isn’t sure what he expected after last night but this wasn’t it. The nonchalance in Hannibal’s demeanor makes him wonder if he made their kiss up. 

Hannibal sits down opposite him. 

“Last night,” Will says, then doesn’t know how to continue. 

“Last night you wanted something and I gave it to you.” Hannibal’s voice is a little rough, but steady. “If you want it again, ask for it.” He makes it sound so simple that Will is taken aback for a moment. Nothing between them was this simple. Everything was a game, except maybe the beginning of their relationship. On Will’s part at least. All the freedom Will gave Hannibal, all the ways he let Hannibal get under his skin – that was simple. 

Will watches Hannibal put out pans and plates, look through the fridge. Ten minutes pass. The smell of bacon is what makes Will move. “I’m going to take a shower,” he tells Hannibal.

“No run today?” Hannibal asks. 

“No.” 

“Is it too harsh on your knees? I prefer swimming.”

How fitting, Will thinks, that he tried to drown them. 

-

The next day, they go out for fresh air, walking around the property and a little further along the flat fields and dirt roads. Hannibal even dressed down. 

Will’s senses are dulled by an afternoon slump. He’s taking in the brown and yellow of the nature around them, the grey sky, and in the distance the first twinkling lights of the city close by. Hannibal buys their groceries there, staying away from the small towns where everybody probably knows each other. Maybe in the winter months they could pull off going together, at reasonable hours. Bundled up in coats and scarfs, perhaps not even Jack would recognize them. 

A gust of wind pulls Will out of his thoughts. 

“It’s getting dark,” he says, dragging his gaze over to Hannibal only to find Hannibal already looking at him, mouth a hard line. As soon as their eyes meet Hannibal’s face clears. 

“We should go,” he agrees, but neither of them move.

Will tries to look at himself through Hannibal’s eyes, to see what Hannibal is seeing other than messy hair, shivering limbs and scars. Will was dragged from his life kicking and screaming, indecisive until the very end at which he tried to kill them both. From Hannibal’s point of view, he’s merely tolerating their way of living, perhaps waiting for an opportunity to leave it all behind. 

Will sighs. An image from their last night together crosses his mind: Hannibal on his knees, trying not to push his cheek into Will’s touch. “If you could–” Will starts saying, but the words feel clumsy in his mouth. 

Hannibal steps closer to him, back straight. In the middle of it is a scar Will doesn’t know anything about. 

Will takes a deep breath. “You said I’d only have to ask – if I want anything.” From the corner of his eye he can see Hannibal nodding. For a second, Will wonders if Hannibal would dirty his pants for him, out here, then smothers the thought. “What do _you_ want?” he asks.

“I want what you want,” Hannibal says without hesitation. 

“That doesn’t suit you,” Will says. He’s looking at his hands, the subtle tremor running through them. “What do you get out of it?” 

“I know that you’re satisfied, in the most primal way,” Hannibal says. “At least for a moment.” 

Will laughs. “Was my contentment always your priority, doctor?” 

“Helping you see your potential was and what’s more satisfying than embracing one’s true nature?” 

Will doesn’t have an answer to that.

They watch the sky darken for a while longer, then Will stands. “Let’s go,” he says. They walk side by side, moving in sync, arms brushing now and then.

-

Every couple of days, Will thinks about asking for Hannibal’s mouth or hand. He’s hyperaware of Hannibal then, aroused by the way he moves, his steady hands, and has to talk himself out of it. Hannibal would say yes, he knows. 

Will is torn between reassuring himself that once the novelty wears off, he’ll be back to sudden bursts of arousal, and the knowledge that he doesn’t want that. It’s only fitting that in this new life he becomes a new man. 

The scar on Will’s stomach heats up at the memory of their kiss. It’s years old but still feels brand new. Especially now that he knows what Hannibal’s mouth on it feels like. When the feeling threatens to overwhelm him, he runs. 

One windy evening, exercise won’t help him, so he drinks. A lot more than he intended to. He doesn’t remember the last time he was this drunk, actually. Maybe in his teens or twenties. Certainly not after he moved to Wolf Trap; by then his desire to try was quenched and his tolerance for alcohol was higher. He sometimes drank too much on work-related gatherings he couldn’t escape from, got tipsy on particularly cold nights out in Wolf Trap in his little house. 

Tonight, he is more than tipsy. He is slouching on the couch with too much whiskey in his belly, staring at nothing and getting lost inside his head too often to keep up a conversation. This could go terribly wrong. He’s aware of that despite the fuzziness in his head. 

He still empties the bottle. 

“Will.”

Hannibal’s voice is too close and too far away at the same time. Soft and deep and intimate. Will is drawn to it like a moth to a flame. He smiles at the sound of it, then scolds himself. 

Hannibal’s warm hand comes to rest on his jaw and Will opens his eyes. “You –“ he breathes, remembering a strong hand on his shoulder, fingers in his hair, crushing embraces. “You used to touch me more,” he says. Hannibal doesn’t do that anymore. Sober, Will might have been able to figure out what that means. Drunk as he is, it just makes him sound accusatory. 

“Do you want me to touch you?” Hannibal asks, helping him to his feet. 

Will is too busy standing upright to answer. 

Hannibal puts an arm around his waist, pulls Will’s arm around his own shoulders and walks him out into the hall. The stairs up to their bedrooms are the hardest part. Will concentrates on every step, but it still takes a long time until Hannibal lets him sit down again. 

“Do you need to use the bathroom?” Hannibal asks where he’s kneeling on the floor and taking Will’s socks off. 

Will shakes his head. All he can feel is heat rushing through his body. It sparks where Hannibal puts his hands. 

Hannibal doesn’t seem to notice. “Raise your arms, please,” he says.

Will does as he’s told and Hannibal pulls his sweater off, leaving him in his t-shirt. When he reaches for Will’s belt, his fingers brush Will’s stomach. The jolt that runs through Will’s body at the touch only fuels the heat in his veins. Will breathes through it and lifts his hips when Hannibal asks him to.

“Good,” Hannibal says. He helps Will lie down. 

“You think I’m going to break,” Will says into the semi-darkness of his bedroom. 

Hannibal smiles. “You’re very strong,” he says, tucking Will in. 

-

Hannibal is reading in the living room when Will goes downstairs the next day. He looks up at Will, taking in his rumpled state. “Do you want to talk about what happened last night?” he asks.

Will nods. They have to, he knows, even if it might bring an end to this thing between them, or shine light to truths Will doesn’t want to face yet. “Same time as always?” Will asks. He needs painkillers now, a shower, and more than anything, he needs to remind himself what he wants to say to Hannibal. “For old times’ sake.” 

Hannibal smiles. “For old times’ sake,” he agrees. 

Will spends most of the day in bed, listening to the rain build up and ease off in turns. After a long shower, he picks out his clothes for their session and then waits. 

When the time comes, it’s storming outside, Nature herself designing their meeting like one of significance. Hannibal must take great pleasure in that. Will finds him waiting in the living room, sitting in a chair in front of the fireplace, legs crossed. The fire paints his face in flickering shades of orange and red. 

“Hello, Will,” Hannibal says, smiling up at him. 

Will can’t help but smile back. Hannibal’s voice meant safety and understanding once – still does to some extent, despite everything that happened. 

“Hello,” Will says and sits down in his chair, hands damp. The silence between them is only disturbed by the crackling fire and the rain battering against the windows. “This is new for me,” Will admits. 

“What? Therapy?” 

Will finds himself copying Hannibal’s smile again. “This – sense of tranquility,” he says. He imitated it before, convinced it was genuine, but never experienced it with such intensity as he does now. 

“Often a sense of tranquility precedes a storm,” Hannibal says. “Is a storm waiting to swallow you up?” 

Will shakes his head. “Last night was,” he stops to search for the right words. “Wires crossing, probably. I feel rewired.” 

Hannibal either knows the reason for Will’s drinking, or he’ll figure it out soon enough. Will doesn’t feel like laying it out for him, even though the possible outcome of it excites him. He could move their conversation in that direction, but more than that he wants Hannibal do it. 

“What does rewired feel like?” Hannibal asks. 

“Strong,” Will says. “Good. I – I dream less.” Less about blood and death, more about Hannibal’s mouth, ironically. But Will’s arousal is gentle compared to the material of his previous dreams. 

“All the monsters from your past sleeping,” Hannibal muses. 

“Not all of them,” Will can’t help himself saying. 

Hannibal’s face lights up in pride and amusement. Monsters and killers and things there’re no names for. They’ve been here before and they both know it. Hannibal ignores the subject. “The path to greatness is one of self-destruction,” he says. “Do you regret it?” 

“Sometimes,” Will says. Yet, where Will’s hatred should be is nothing of significance. “Some of my old life didn’t deserve destruction. My family.” The word feels weird in his mouth even after years of saying it and trying to make it fit to himself. He thinks about his life with Molly and Walter, the normalcy of it that so often felt like waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I loved her,” he adds, because that at least is true. 

Hannibal’s gaze drops to the floor. He looks delicate and sharp at the same time, like Will might cut himself on him and collect more scars but enjoy doing it. 

Will chooses his next words carefully. “I tried to destroy us, too,” he says. 

“God didn’t hear your prayer. He let us live.” Hannibal looks him in the eyes. “Or was it not our death you wanted when you pulled us over the edge of that bluff?” 

“I needed clarity.”

“A rebirth, then,” Hannibal says. “Water is purification, life. The driving force of all nature. Half of our bodies are water.” 

Outside, the storm rages on, but they’re in their own little bubble of fire and warmth.

“You find strength and peace in it,” Hannibal continues. “Perhaps that’s what you wanted for us. Let bygones be bygones and on to a new life,” he says. “I forgive you. Our teacup is golden where parts are missing.” 

Will stares him down, amused. “You forgive to manipulate,” he points out.

“Whereas you forgive how God forgives.” Hannibal smiles. “Are we back to square one, Will?” 

Will shakes his head. “We are here. We’re even.” After a moment, he acknowledges what Hannibal already knows, the reason they’re here. “I liked killing him.” He sees the long shadows in Jack’s office, Alana’s suspicious face, tastes the whiskey he drank when he agreed that Dolarhyde and Hannibal needed to die. Somewhere along the way his own death became inevitable, too. 

Hannibal regards him. “What did you like about it?” 

“I didn’t have to pull a trigger,” Will says, clipped. “You were there,” he adds quietly. He can feel Hannibal watching him with the same intense gaze they shared on the last night of their previous lives. His body tenses at the memory of the power that rushed through him as they slayed the dragon. “It didn’t come without a price.”

“I forgive you,” Hannibal says. “We could have been safe there.”

Will frowns. “At the bottom of the ocean?” 

“At the bottom of the ocean,” Hannibal says. “Our deaths in your design, elevated by it.”

Will surveys the room, the space between their chairs. “This is what we have instead,” he says. Their kiss springs to his mind. Without meaning to, Will places his hand over his stomach, breath heavy. He can’t stop his gaze from wandering over Hannibal; his hands, the breadth of his shoulders, his mouth.

“Does it come with – a certain kind of pain?” Hannibal wonders, his eyes glued to Will’s hand on his stomach. “Some people like pleasure mixed with pain to ground them.”

“It feels like I’m burning up,” Will confesses. “ _This_ ,“ he gestures to his body, hoping it conveys the meaning, “is new for me, too.” 

Hannibal is silent for a long time, reconsidering perhaps Will’s lifestyle in this new light, although he must’ve had his opinions. What did the avoidance of contact, physical and otherwise, tell him? Will’s lonely little house, his lack of social niceties, the one sexual encounter that Hannibal influenced heavily – all of that was obvious and Hannibal is more than observant. 

Still, all he says is: “You have to be more specific.” 

Will smirks. “Let’s say intimacy was never my strong suit,” he says. 

“Was your wife unsatisfied?” Hannibal asks without missing a beat.

Will sighs. 

“Did she know about the scar?” Hannibal asks when Will remains silent. He’s asking more than that. In Hannibal’s carefully blank features, Will sees that being somebody’s replacement is an alien concept to Hannibal. Maybe it’s even the first time Hannibal’s confronted with it. 

“She didn’t know,” Will says. He leaves out the discussions he had with Molly and the images his mind made up of Hannibal, mostly during sex. 

“Perhaps you didn’t trust others to treat you right,” Hannibal says.

“And you would? Because you –?” He can’t bring himself to says it, to ask if Hannibal aches for him every day.

But he doesn’t have to. 

Something in his posture, or voice gives him away. Perhaps the rise and fall of his chest, the way he looks at Hannibal, the stutter in his words. 

Hannibal studies him. “You know,” he says, his fingers dancing along the armrest of his chair. He avoids Will’s eyes as he adjusts in his seat. “How does that make you feel?” he asks after a heavy silence. 

“Powerful,” Will confesses. Molly’s love was different. It wasn’t a sharp knife twisting in his gut, no suspension in mid-air. Hannibal would let Will do anything and Will doesn’t trust himself with this much power. Not yet anyway. 

“You think you know,” Hannibal says.

Will stands and crosses the space between them. “If I left tomorrow, would you let me?” He places his thumb on Hannibal’s cheek, lets his fingers rest on his neck. “You want what I want, don’t you?”

Hannibal is tense. He could snap any moment and what that would look like after everything they’ve been through, Will can’t predict. He drags his thumb over Hannibal’s mouth that fits so perfectly on Will’s skin, and imagines his life after he’d leave. He sees himself a year from now, gaunt and drunk, haunted by ghosts and memories and what-ifs.

“What if I want to fuck you?” Will asks. The words feel heavy on his tongue, bring a redness to his skin he didn’t expect. They don’t go with Hannibal’s fine clothes and finer manners, but they make the want in Will’s belly surge. It makes him bolder, makes him pull on Hannibal’s lower lip until he can see sharp teeth.

A bolt of lightning paints the room white for a split second. 

Hannibal stays quiet.

Will drags his wet thumb down to Hannibal’s throat and loosens his tie enough to open the first three buttons of Hannibal’s shirt. The rest of Hannibal’s clothes remain pristine as ever, only in disarray where Will spreads the shirt, fingers brushing grey hair and warm skin. He steps back to look at Hannibal – unpresentable because Will made him so – then almost trips over his own feet when Hannibal leaps from the chair like the apex predator he is and wraps his arms around him. 

Their mouths meet in a kiss that’s more teeth than lips. As in all things concerning Hannibal, Will fights against it at first, instinctively, then Hannibal slows down, lets his lips and tongue soothe Will’s bruised mouth and Will slumps into his arms, warps his own around him, and kisses back. 

They part after a while, both panting. Will sways a little. 

“Wait here,” Hannibal tells him. He disappears upstairs, leaving Will alone with his heart thumping and his fingers shaking. His mind is pleasantly blank. Still, he finds himself pacing the room. He can’t tell how much time passes before he comes to a stop at the windows. The glass is steamed up and cold. Will’s tempted to press his hot face against the pane when he becomes aware of Hannibal’s presence in the room. 

Hannibal is naked, all the skin he usually keeps hidden on display now. 

For Will. 

Will’s eyes linger on his chest, the slight curve of his belly. He didn’t give much thought to Hannibal’s body before, apart from noticing glimpses of its strength and misjudging that information. Now, he can’t take his eyes off it. Hannibal isn’t polished and sophisticated here; he is scars, lean muscle and hair that runs from his chest to his groin, thickening there. His cock hangs heavily between his legs, engorged. He moves with confidence.

Will swallows. “I want–“ Before he can finish the sentence, Hannibal lies down on the couch on his stomach, resting his head on folded arms. He looks up at Will over his shoulder. 

“I know,” he says and spreads his legs a little so Will can see the wetness there. 

“Oh,” Will says. He fumbles with his belt and pants until he can pull his cock out. 

In his dreams, Hannibal is not pliant, but neither is Will. They come together in a clash. Whenever one of them offers his mouth, the other goes for the throat. 

Perhaps Hannibal wants this first time to be easy, because that’s what he promised. Easy. All Will has to do is ask. 

Will kneels over Hannibal’s hips, caging him in with his legs. From up close, he recognizes the Verger family crest in the scar on Hannibal’s back. He touches the edge of it. “Who did this to you?” he asks. 

“Mason Verger’s assistant,” Hannibal says, voice deep. He angles his hips up in invitation, apparently not wanting to talk things out for once. 

Will understands. He pushes forward and his breath catches in his throat. Slick heat engulfs him, makes him slam their hips together. “S-sorry,” he gasps. He should slow down, make it easy, but he can’t help himself. He starts thrusting as soon as he’s all the way in, his hips pulling back and jerking forward helplessly as he clutches at Hannibal’s shoulders. 

It’s strange that they haven’t been here before. In all those years and all the ways they’ve known each other, this has never crossed Will’s mind. The notion that they’re finally sharing this last connection urges Will on. His thrusts turn rough. The sound of their skin slapping together becomes obscene. It’s only interrupted by Will’s panting and Hannibal’s labored breathing. 

Will forces himself to slow down. He puts his forehead to Hannibal’s neck and looks down at himself. He’s fully clothed, pushing against Hannibal’s naked body. It feels dirty in a way the rest of it doesn’t. His cock is the only thing exposed, but only for a moment before it disappears inside Hannibal. The sight alone is almost enough to make Will come. Then he sees his scar peeking through his half-unbuttoned shirt. 

Oh. 

For a second, he’s tempted to press one hand against his stomach and finish, but an involuntarily hard thrust makes Hannibal shake under him, and Will needs to see. 

He pulls out and takes his shirt off. “Turn over,” he says. 

Hannibal moves with ease and elegance, his legs bending and spreading for Will. He is fully erect, a little wet at the tip, the foreskin pulled back. 

“You like it,” Will says. 

Hannibal studies him: his chest and arms, his cock, then his eyes. “I do.” He sounds a little rough now, which is good. Will himself is a sweaty mess, trembling in his skin. He spreads Hannibal’s knees a little more and pushes inside in one single thrust. 

“What do you like about it?” he whispers. 

“Your eagerness,” Hannibal says, his breath shallow. “I can smell your want.” 

“Yeah?” Will says. “What do you want?” 

Instead of answering, Hannibal wraps his arms and legs around Will, pulling him close. 

A shudder runs through Will’s body at the touch to his scar. “Hannibal,” he says in warning. 

This time he gets a bite. Hannibal’s teeth sink in the flesh on the side of his neck. It’s similar enough to Will’s dreams that his hips jerk forward, picking up the same brutal pace from before. 

The urgency of it must bring an end to whatever game Hannibal is playing with himself. He shifts, tightening around Will, his body tense. “I want you in my bed,” he says in Will's ear and Will comes, clutching selfishly at him for the last couple of thrusts. His body jerks with what feels like a second orgasm when Hannibal shoves a hand between their bellies and touches his scar. “Yes,” Will groans against Hannibal’s neck. “Yes.”

The first thing Will becomes aware of after the pleasure subsides, is the fact that he’s still wearing shoes, his toes curling in them and cramping up a little. Under him, Hannibal is panting. He has one hand wrapped around himself, his stomach and chest wet with come. Some of it landed on Will as well. 

Will pulls out gently and plops down on the couch. 

“I would suggest a light dinner,” Hannibal says after their breathing evens out. He places one foot on the floor and leaves the other on the couch, showing off the mess they made; Will’s come is smeared between his buttocks, Hannibal’s own glistening on his stomach and chest. 

Will can’t look away. “What?” he says.

“It’s late,” Hannibal says. “I would suggest a light dinner.” 

Will’s fingers are clumsy all through dinner and it gets worse after they move to the living room. The book in his lap is for appearances' sake, because all his focus is on Hannibal. At one point, Will gives in and looks over at him, only to find a frown on his face. He can’t help himself saying, “Did I – did I hurt you? Before.” Hannibal was very tight. 

“No,” Hannibal says. 

At bedtime, he takes Will by the hand and leads him to his own bedroom. 

Will’s heart is thumping while they undress, even more so when they lie down in Hannibal’s bed, side by side, staring at the dark ceiling. It’s going to be another sleepless night, he’s sure, but then Hannibal turns toward him and places a warm hand over Will’s heart. 

“Sleep,” Hannibal says.

Will closes his eyes, lets the soft rain and Hannibal’s warmth lull him to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Will wakes up with a gasp, the red mist of his dream still clouding his vision. Hannibal was kissing him, holding him down until Will couldn’t breathe. He was heat and Will was engulfed by it. 

Completely. 

Will takes a steadying breath. He is lying on his side, back to Hannibal, his hand on his stomach. He pulls it away and lets his quivering body calm down before he turns over. In the darkness, he can make out the curve of Hannibal’s shoulder, his breath even, body still. 

Hannibal is usually a light sleeper, they both are, but they’re getting used to sleeping next to each other. They’ve been sharing Hannibal’s bed for over a week. Will has his glasses and book on the nightstand, spare t-shirts in the drawer below for possible night sweats. 

They touch on accident sometimes and other times with purpose, placing a palm against warm skin in the middle of the night. The touches continue outside the bedroom, too; Hannibal’s hand on Will’s elbow or his shoulder, Will’s fingers brushing along Hannibal’s forearm when they cook together. But apart from that they take it slow. It’s unnerving as it is exciting.

Will closes his eyes and sleeps. 

Later, in the brighter light of the kitchen, he studies Hannibal – his relaxed shoulders, the jauntiness of his step.

“What will you do now that you got what you wanted?” Will asks. After he won their cat-and-mouse game and Hannibal was led away from his property in handcuffs, Will’s days seemed longer than before, his house bigger. It took a while to relearn to be alone, to remember that most people he talked to didn’t quite follow his train of thoughts like Hannibal did. Will’s mind palace at that time was still Hannibal’s kitchen and the smell of Abigail’s blood, no matter how hard he pretended that they’d reached some kind of conclusion. On very lonely days he saw his own house and Hannibal sitting at his bedside, talking about teacups. 

Hannibal’s back straightens a little where he’s standing at the stove. He places a paper-thin crepe on a plate, pours the batter into the pan for the next one. “I believe you’re not ready for that yet,” he says. 

Will freezes with his mug half-way to his mouth, trying to decipher the meaning. When he catches a glimpse of Hannibal’s smile, his belly tightens. 

Oh, hell. 

Will’s thoughts have been circling the topic of sex for days, weeks even, but the suggestion still catches him off guard somehow. Especially, the bravado in Hannibal’s voice. It wouldn’t affect him so much if Will wasn’t sure that Hannibal is meaning every word he says. 

Will has to get up and walk off the sudden surge of arousal in his body. “You,” he clears his throat, “you don’t have to be gentle,” he says. “I wasn’t.” He sees Hannibal under him, his back expanding and contracting with every breath. 

Hannibal turns around and looks at Will. “Are you giving me permission to do with your body as I please?” he asks. 

Will nods. It’s a dangerous permission, given their history, but their claws and teeth are dull for the time being, sharp enough to hold rather than tear. “You’ve always done that,” Will says.

“Not in this way.”

“Right,” Will nods. “I’m allowing it.” 

“Good,” Hannibal says. “I will think of something.”

“Do you not think about it?” Wil asks. He finds it difficult to imagine – Hannibal wanted so much of him, wanted to consume him. But when it comes to Hannibal, Will’s judgement is clouded by his own feelings. 

Hannibal walks over to him. “I do,” he says and Will’s thoughts scatter. 

“Then it shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with something.”

“It’ll be easy,” Hannibal says. He puts a plate in Will’s hands, their fingers touching as they both hold onto it for a moment. 

Will considers kissing him and making him decide now, but instead he walks over to the table and sits down to eat.

\- 

The days get shorter. Will has to wait longer for the sky to brighten in the mornings so he can go for a run and not trip over his own feet. 

The mouth-shaped bruise on his neck fades and Hannibal still doesn’t ask for more than they already share. A warm bed, careful touches that get under Will’s skin. The idea of touching Hannibal again makes him shake in anticipation. Will realizes slowly that that might be the result Hannibal is hoping for. He waits so Will can wallow in the images his own mind comes up with, so he can think about all the ways Hannibal would have him. 

Will’s imagination softens here, though – there’re no clear visions when it comes to his own desires. He mostly pictures Hannibal’s mouth on him. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the morning, he sees himself spread out under Hannibal, his body bending the way Hannibal wants it. 

One morning, the heat inside Will becomes distracting, makes him drag his own hands over his thighs. His breath is heavy in the silence of the bedroom. “This excites you more than physical acts do,” Will says, licking his lips. He wonders if Hannibal can smell it on him, how ready he is at this moment. 

Hannibal turns on his side and looks at him. “What does?” 

“Waiting.” Will says. “Making me wait.” 

“I’m sure you recall our night together,” Hannibal says, smiling. “I was very excited.” 

“Yes, but this is different.” Will puts one hand on his stomach, over the scar. He’s giving Hannibal exactly what he wants either way, so he might as well enjoy it. “It excites you that I want you in this way and that I would wait.”

“I’m not forbidding you to pleasure yourself,” Hannibal says.

“No, you’re not,” Will agrees. He rubs at his t-shirt, the scar beneath, until his cock fills out. It doesn’t take very long with how hot he is for it. “You thought about it, you expected that I wouldn’t want this,” he says. “What would you have done then?” 

“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Will slides his hand into his boxers and wraps it around his swollen cock. He sees the exact moment Hannibal understands that Will won’t stop what he’s doing, watches as Hannibal’s eyes darken.

“It is what it is,” Hannibal says, his voice throaty. He still doesn’t move. 

Will wets his free hand with spit and pushes it between his legs. It’s a bold and impulsive move, something he hasn’t thought of before, at least not about the specifics. He doesn’t go further than gripping his own thigh, but he’s careful to have the sheets around him block the view, so Hannibal can only guess, can judge the depth of penetration by the strain in Will’s arm. 

“Now that you have it, you can’t decide what to do with it,” Will says, “with me.”

“Does that excite you?” Hannibal asks. 

Will’s skin heats under his own hands. He’s too distracted to answer. He intended to rile Hannibal up, but his body turns against him as it so often does. His fingers inch down between his thighs, before he stops himself and concentrates on the hand around his cock. 

For a while, there’s just Will’s panting, the jerking motion of his arm and Hannibal’s keen eyes.

Will has to look away. 

“Lovely,” Hannibal whispers, the reverence in his voice pushing Will over the edge. 

The moment Will comes, hidden under layers of fabric, Hannibal is on him, pressing his face in Will’s neck and inhaling deeply. His hips bump against Will’s leg once.

Will’s body relaxes, a wave of pleasure flooding it that has nothing to do with sex. “You can,” he says. He pulls his hands from his soiled boxers, wipes them on his t-shirt and grabs Hannibal’s shoulders. “I’m allowing it.” He doesn’t know if it’s his words or the scent of musk on his hands that he himself can smell, but something in Hannibal breaks. He breathes deeply, pressing a kiss to the corner of Will’s mouth. “Will you allow me to wait as well?” he asks. “To savor it.”

Will’s mouth goes dry. “Yes,” he says, his hands falling off Hannibal’s shoulders. 

Hannibal catches one and presses a kiss to his palm.

-

The first frost comes a couple days later, catching them off guard. 

They wake up in the middle of the night, shivering, clutching at each other. Will presses closer to Hannibal and tries to go back to sleep, but has to admit defeat when that doesn’t help much. He gets the blanket from his room, puts it over them both, and beneath it they inch closer until they’re pressed together again and finally warm. 

In the morning, Will pulls the sleeves of his sweater over his hands. It’s cold enough that his breath is visible. He makes a note to tell Hannibal he needs a pair of gloves, and gets going before he can change his mind about the run. 

At the tree trunk, he listens for the injured dog but it’s just him and the woods, so he heads back. 

The sky is clear and bright that day, but the temperature only rises slightly, promising another cold night. Around noon Will goes into the basement, looking for the heater he thinks he saw there, thrilled by the idea of getting his hands a little dirty. 

When he finds it, he carries it up into the warm living room. 

“You were successful,” Hannibal says. He is reading, sitting in the armchair by the fire place. He looks at the heater with distaste and Will smiles. The couch where he fucked Hannibal still smells of some kind of cleanser Hannibal used to clean it with the next day. 

Will takes a seat on the floor. “Yeah, need to check if it’s still working.” 

The grey box of it and the power cord look fine – a little dusty but functional. Will cleans the heater first, then plugs it in. He waits for it to heat up, tries the switch a couple times, but it stays off. 

“I’ll buy a new one,” Hannibal comments. 

Will gives him a blank look. He unrolls more of the cord and tries moving it while turning the switch on and off. The heater doesn’t respond. “The fuse, probably,” Will says. Or maybe a loose contact. He’ll have to take a better look. 

The first time his father showed him how to carefully handle parts of boat motors, Will was six, maybe even younger. It made little sense at that time. All he saw was chaos until he got older and his father explained it again and again and again. Will started seeing patterns in the chaos, connections with one purpose that couldn’t be misjudged. Easy solutions. 

He wants that now, with Hannibal. But there’s no black and white, no clear-cut lines with him. It’s chaos and drowning. 

They keep a tool box in the garage. Will fetches it and begins his work. 

The outside of the heater proves to be intact, even on second inspection, so Will unscrews the lid at the bottom. He doesn’t have to look for long: the cable connecting to the switch is burnt off, isolation melted. The damage is irreparable. He needs to close the circuit by connecting the wires and leaving the switch out of it. They’ll have to unplug the heater every time they want it off, but it’ll work. 

Will cuts the parts of the wires that are damaged and bares them, then rummages in the tool box for a wire nut. He splices the wires together, screws the lid back on, and when he plugs the heater in this time, it clicks on and soon the air is filled with the distinct smell of heat and old electronics. 

Will's face and hands warm. He looks up at Hannibal, a cheeky remark on his lips, but closes his mouth when he sees Hannibal smiling at him, the book he was reading lying uselessly in his lap. 

Hannibal clears his throat, closes the book and stands up. “Will you come to bed?” he asks.

Will’s heartbeat quickens. He unplugs the heater and nods. 

Hannibal leads him to the bathroom first. “Wash your hands,” he says. He stands beside him, watching, one warm palm on the back of Will’s neck. Then they’re in their bedroom and Hannibal stands before Will as if he can’t decide what to do with him. 

Eventually, he starts undressing him. Will’s sweater goes quickly, but Hannibal takes his time with Will’s shirt, opening one button at a time, lingering. Savoring it. His fingers trail over every bit of skin he uncovers until Will’s knees feel weak. 

Finally, Hannibal drops the shirt on the foot of the bed and crowds Will against it. He pulls Will’s pants and underwear to mid-thigh before making Will sit down.

“Did you mean it?” Hannibal says. He kneels to take Will’s clothes the rest of the way off.

“What?” Will doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They hover over Hannibal’s shoulders, but he ends up grabbing the edge of the mattress instead. He feels exposed like this, more than taking off clothes accomplishes usually, though he shouldn’t. Hannibal knows every crazy thought that Will’s mind formed. This is nothing compared to what they shared before. 

Still, Will’s knees inch closer until he makes a conscious decision to spread them wide and let Hannibal look at him; at his flaccid cock, the dark hair around it.

“Can I do with you what I want?” Hannibal sounds unconvinced.

Will narrows his eyes. “Do you want me to say please?” 

“You do look lovely when you do that,” Hannibal says. 

The hum of the heater is loud in the silence around them, Hannibal’s scrutiny ruthless. “Move up the bed,” he says, taking off his own clothes. “The picture I painted in my mind for this was different. You changed it.” 

Will shivers, goosebumps rising on his skin as he lies down on the cool sheets. The room’s temperature is still too low for this much naked skin, but Hannibal is quick to cover him with his own body and heat.

“We seem to have that effect on each other,” Will says. He knows the feeling of being caught in the middle of two sides and having Hannibal push him over, one way or another. 

Hannibal rubs Will’s arms and chest and thighs as another shiver runs through Will’s body. Every bit of skin he touches seems to sing under his hands, turning sensitive with repeated caresses. 

“I want to draw you like this,” Hannibal says. At the sound Will makes, he adds, “Not now.” 

Good. 

There’s only one piece of clothing between them – Hannibal left his briefs on. Will reaches for them, only to have his wrists grabbed and pressed into the pillow. 

“Oh-kay,” Will says, voice strained. 

“Let me,” Hannibal says. 

They’re touching from head to toe, Hannibal’s face buried in Will’s neck, his weight immobilizing him. A beast holding its prey and getting ready to swallow it whole. And yet, Will wouldn’t move. He can’t move – his limbs feel heavy, a bone-deep lethargy settling over him. He has difficulty breathing with Hannibal on top of him, but the weight is welcome, grounding him. 

“Is this all you thought of?” Will asks after a while.

“No,” Hannibal says. He leans up and spreads Will’s legs with a gentle touch to the inside of his thighs, lifting and bending them, making room for himself there as if to show Will how he’d take him. 

Will fists the sheet under him at the unfamiliar position and stretch in his muscles. The feeling of exposure returns and his cock fills out a little, then a little more when Hannibal leans over him for a kiss, pressing his clothed crotch against Will’s. 

Their lips meet gently. Hannibal kisses his bottom lip twice, pressing harder on the third touch, his mouth opening and Will can’t resist chasing the hint of moisture he feels. He nudges his tongue against it. His cock pulses when Hannibal responds by opening his mouth a little more. 

When they part, Will’s heart is slamming against his ribs. An involuntary sound falls from his lips at the feeling of wet heat on his neck, then around his nipple and over his chest. It stops before reaching his scar. 

“When I first saw it we were in Florence,” Hannibal says. 

Will’s eyes open. Hannibal is sitting between his legs, looking at the scar, his warm hands on Will’s pale thighs. 

“Chiyoh shot me,” Will says. 

Hannibal nods. “I took the bullet out.” His fingers inch closer to the scar, touching the skin around it, Will’s navel. “I hadn’t imagined that your body would make such a beautiful thing out of it.” He sounds a little breathless and Will’s stomach tightens in anticipation. 

“Did you touch it?” Will asks. “In Florence.” 

“No,” Hannibal says. He drags the tips of his fore and middle finger from one end of the scar to the other and Will’s cock jerks, getting wet. 

Heat rises in Will’s cheeks. He curls one arm over his head and hides half of his face in the crook of it, breathing hard through his nose.

“Can you climax just from this?” Hannibal asks. 

Will pushes his belly up into his touch. “Never tried it.” 

Hannibal hums and keeps stroking the scar. He wets his other hand with spit and closes it around Will’s cock. “Would you like to try?” he asks, touching him with patience, giving him a little relief before his hand moves down and tests the fullness of Will’s testicles, parts his cheeks a little, just enough to see.

At the hitch in Will’s breath, Hannibal pulls his hand away and wraps it around his cock again. 

“Will?” 

“I – I don’t know,” Will says. Hannibal would probably make him leave his clothes on, cut his shirt enough to reveal his scar and then just give him his hand or his mouth for hours. Or maybe he would strip him so he could watch Will’s body struggle with arousal. 

Will gets a taste of Hannibal’s cruelty now, with Hannibal alternating between licking at the scar and moving the hand on Will’s cock, but never at the same time. Never long enough to make him come. 

After a while, Will’s fingers start hurting from the way he clutches at the pillow under his head, but even as the pain registers he can’t let go, too focused on how his hips move, either thrusting up into Hannibal’s hand or pushing down on the knuckles Hannibal presses against the sensitive skin behind his testicles. Will’s lips are dry from all the panting he’s doing. His back arches a little, presenting his belly, begging.

“Hannibal ––” he gasps, but he doesn’t have to ask for it. Hannibal has mercy on him, for once. He presses a kiss to the scar without stopping the movement of his hands, and Will comes, his hips jerking between the points of contact until his orgasm peaks almost painfully. He shakes from it, twists away from Hannibal’s touch when it becomes too much to bear. 

After catching his breath, he lets Hannibal clean him and hand him his clothes. He wants to offer something in return – Hannibal is obviously aroused – but by the time he can string together a coherent thought, Hannibal is already dressed and heading downstairs to prepare lunch. 

-

They go out together that evening, walking side by side through the shopping street in the nearby city; Will with his beanie pulled down low over his brow, Hannibal with thick-rimmed glasses and a scarf to stave off the cold. 

“You worry too much,” Hannibal says at one point. They watch the evening crowd wander from one golden-lit shop window to the next. The sound of their voices is deafening, their delight contagious. 

Will watches the faces around him closely, all oblivious and self-absorbed.

Hannibal’s right. They’re a long way from home. Months have passed. 

Will adjusts his posture to match Hannibal’s, becomes someone who has every right to be here.


	5. Chapter 5

Will has to skip his run when he gets up one morning and everything outside is covered in a thick layer of snow. He stands at the backdoor for a while, indecisive, then closes it. 

The house is cold enough to make him want to go back to bed, but he can hear Hannibal moving around already and without him the bed will be just as cold. So instead of going back upstairs, Will lights the fire in the living room, makes coffee and watches the snow flutter down in their backyard. He can’t see very far, the trees and fields around them are as white as the sky. 

“More snow is expected,” Hannibal says as he joins him at the kitchen window a while later. “We have a cold week ahead of us.” He lays his tablet aside, then pours himself a cup of coffee. 

After breakfast, Will puts on his coat and boots and clears the drive-way. They’ll have to go shopping before the snow piles up too much. Even now, Will assumes it’ll take a while to get there on snow-covered dirt roads and no neighbors’ cars to pave the way. 

He’s right. 

The drive into the city takes longer than their shopping does. Thankfully, though, everybody else seems reluctant to face the weather. Will expected hordes of parents with children, but the shops are mostly empty. The parking lot only fills with other shoppers when Will goes back to the car. He watches them from the safety of the car as he waits for Hannibal; families with children, young and old, all bundled up in thick clothes, hurrying. Two men bump together in their haste. Coffee and groceries spill everywhere, then the awkward moment of getting up follows. 

A burst of laughter falls from Will’s mouth before he can stop it. He looks away and presses his lips together, but on the way back home, the clumsy run-in keeps popping up in his head and the laughter stuck in his throat spills out of him. It feels like his body is trying to convince itself that it still knows how to do that, like something wild and living in Will’s chest was contained for too long and wants release.

Hannibal chuckles softly after Will explains his behavior, and it only spurs Will on. 

By the time, they’re home and the groceries are put away, Will has calmed down. He stops Hannibal with a hand on his chest, standing in the kitchen doorway, still in their coats. The release of endorphins in his bloodstream makes him bold. “I wanted to kiss you, before,” Will says. He’s not sure if he means in the car, or last night in bed, or earlier this morning. It’s true for any of those moments. 

“Why didn’t you?” 

Will shakes his head, watching Hannibal’s mouth as it forms the words. He leans in and kisses him slow and deep, like people kiss their lovers before taking them to bed for the first time. His teeth scrape Hannibal’s upper lip, but for once Will doesn’t bite. 

Under his palm, Hannibal’s heart speeds up. 

Will presses closer so they’re touching from chest to thigh and lets his hand wander up, fingers stroking Hannibal’s neck. When a tremor runs through Hannibal’s entire body, Will breaks their kiss. “Cold?” he asks, even though the look on Hannibal’s face suggests something else – his eyes are closed, skin flushed. He looks like Will could break him with just one more touch. 

“Warm,” Hannibal whispers eventually and Will’s lips stretch into a smile. The near hysterical laughter from before is gone. His body is relaxed. “Good,” Will says, stepping away from Hannibal to let him calm down. He doesn’t want more than this right now. A moment of quiet intimacy. 

The expression on Hannibal’s face stays with him, though. It’s on a loop in his head - the flush of his skin, his breathy voice - and in the morning, Will wakes up with the realization that he’s only once seen Hannibal this vulnerable before – when he was on his knees for Will, tears in his eyes, Will’s fingers on his cheek. It’s as if Hannibal knows exactly what to do with violence from Will but shatters at gentleness. 

Will tests his theory at breakfast and touches Hannibal just to touch, his fingers trailing over the inside of Hannibal’s wrist, over the scars Will put there. He watches as Hannibal goes still but lets it happen anyway. Like an animal that's learning to be tame. If Will gets bitten, he’ll only have himself to blame.

In the evening, after a lone walk in the snow, Will puts his icy fingers on Hannibal’s neck, the skin so warm it hurts a little. He leaves his hand there until he can feel Hannibal’s thumping pulse and a repressed shudder. 

“What are you drawing?” Will asks. 

Hannibal leans back to let Will see. It’s the shopping street they walked through last week, the details remarkable. The other drawings on the desk are of Hannibal’s house in Baltimore. Will recognizes the kitchen and dining room. 

“Do you miss it?” Will pulls his hand away from Hannibal’s neck and touches the edge of one drawing carefully. 

Even though this house satisfies Hannibal’s peculiar taste, it’s more Will’s style when it comes to its location – in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nature, their next neighbors miles away.

“I like it here,” Hannibal says. 

“Me, too.” 

“Much better than a prison cell,” Hannibal adds, smiling. 

Will pours them a drink, then sits down on the other side of Hannibal’s desk and watches him draw. 

Hannibal’s prison experience must’ve been similar to Will’s. Despite the many advantages he was granted, it must have been distant and cold after all the buzz wore off. There were the court-assigned sessions with Alana and letters from people he didn’t know, the clinical touch of people paid to keep him locked up. No visitors except for those gloating and those wanting to see for themselves that the thing there was no name for was behind bars. 

Hannibal puts his pencil down and the drawings away. He takes in Will flexing fingers, his ruddy cheeks. “Let me draw you a bath, yes?” He’s up and out of the living room before Will can answer. 

“Okay,” Will says to himself. 

When Hannibal lets Will in later, the bathroom is hot and humid, the shower running. Hannibal quickly closes the door to keep the warmth inside and Will’s chest tightens already in the damp air. He puts their re-filled glasses on the counter and raises an eyebrow at the chair Hannibal left next to the tub. 

“You expect a show?” 

“Not at all,” Hannibal says. 

Still, Will feels his gaze as if it’s a physical touch. He strips quickly, leaving his clothes on the floor for Hannibal to put in the laundry basket and then slowly steps into the tub. It’s big enough for them both, taking up one corner of the room. Will bathed regularly in their first month here, when he couldn’t stand long enough to shower, or raise his arm high enough. 

“Good?” Hannibal asks. He hands Will his drink and sits down in the chair. 

The temperature of the water is perfect. A gentle floral scent rises from it. Will rests his head on a folded-up towel and closes his eyes for a second. “Yes,” he says. He is remined of all the other times Hannibal did this – _took care_ of him as he tried too early to make him a killer and a home. He was the only source of stability in Will’s life, and the greedy part inside Will didn’t want to see beyond that, because it wanted nothing more than Hannibal’s healing voice and hands. 

Old anger and shame bloom in Will’s chest. He takes a sip of whiskey to wash them away. They don’t have room here. Here Will and Hannibal are just two men, trying to figure out what can be said out loud and what has to stay hidden.

Hannibal’s hand around his ankle pulls Will from his thoughts. “You’re making a mess,” he comments as Hannibal lifts his foot out of the tub. Water drips over the edge and onto the floor, soaks Hannibal’s pants, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“Only a little,” Hannibal says with a smile. He presses his thumb into the arch of Will’s foot and Will almost drops the glass in his hand. It’s good. So good it hurts a little. Like everything Hannibal does. Will sighs and allows it. He watches the muscles in Hannibal’s forearms shift, his sweater rolled up, the way his hair falls across his forehead as he works. It’s as long now as it was when they first met. 

“What do you see?” Hannibal asks after a while, aware of Will’s scrutiny. 

“An opportunity.” 

Hannibal stops the massage to have a sip of whiskey. “What would it bring?”

“Your honesty.” 

“Am I being dishonest?” Hannibal puts his glass on the counter behind him – a click as glass and porcelain meet – then wraps both hands around Will’s foot. 

Will shakes his head. “You are – deflecting,” he says carefully. “Dodging.” The amber liquid in Will’s glass moves with the gentle rotation of his wrist. Will watches it as if it holds all the answers they need. “You’re not savoring,” he says finally.

“Is this not savoring?” 

“Is it?”

Hannibal looks into his eyes. “Perhaps it’s both,” he relents. “Savoring and dodging.”

“I know about dodging,” Will says. “It won’t help you.” The rush of power he felt when slaying the Dragon surges through his body, a reminder of the inevitability he couldn’t escape. “Why do you feel you have to do both?” 

“What would you have me do?”

“Decide.” 

Hannibal smirks at him. They both hear the hypocrisy in Will’s words. Hannibal must be in a good mood tonight, because he lets it slide. “I’ve decided a long time ago, Will.” 

“When only you knew what you were deciding for.” 

The circular rubs on Will’s foot stop, until Hannibal is just holding on. “You want to see me and–” 

“No, I see you,” Will cuts him off. “You were a shadow in my mind for so long, but I see you. You’re scared that I might take it back. All of this.” He drains the glass in one gulp and puts it aside. “I won’t.” 

Hannibal regards him. “You once told me you were ready to do what needed to be done.” 

“You forgave me.” 

Hannibal lets go of him slowly and smiles. “Your other foot, please,” he says. His hands are wet and warm. 

A sudden hunger settles over Will, its root right under his sternum. He knows it’s the kind that can’t be sated no matter how much he eats or drinks. It wants all the things they could’ve been. “Join me,” he says. 

A moment of revealing skin passes, of muscle tensing and releasing, before Hannibal sits down between Will’s legs and holds his hands out, palms up. 

Will places his foot in the middle of Hannibal’s chest instead. “How does it feel to you?” he wonders. “Love.” 

With all the possible scenarios of them whirring in Will's head, he sees the one that doesn’t include their encounter. Hannibal would still have his house, his name untouched. He’d still be feeding the Baltimore elite the rude and undeserving, finding amusement in their blindness, but he’d be surrounded by people who don’t know and would never know him. People who couldn’t know him. 

“I bet you don’t like it much,” Will says. 

Hannibal avoids his eyes, grabs his foot and applies the right kind of pressure. “It’s easy,” he says. 

“You’re stronger when I’m not around,” Will says even though he feels an answering tug in his own chest. Something hot and burning, something he could get used to. He’s caught for a moment between pushing further and going back to a safer place, but then Hannibal decides for him – he yanks him closer, not caring about the water that splashes over the edge of the tub, or the glass that falls to the floor and shatters. 

They collide, legs and arms moving and falling together naturally. 

Easily. 

Hannibal doesn’t ask this time. They both know he doesn’t have to; Will’s mouth falls open at a single touch to his jaw, his eyes closing as Hannibal presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth, then licks inside with little finesse. 

He is shaking in Will’s arms when they part. 

“Isolation isn’t as attractive as it was before,” Will says. “You don’t find strength in it anymore.” 

Hannibal smiles at him. “Neither do you.” 

Will knows. He knew for a while, but it’s not something he can keep to himself anymore. Hannibal’s presence in his life is inescapable, the place he made for himself in Will’s mind irrevocable. 

Will kisses him until the water is lukewarm. 

In the bedroom, Hannibal’s touch becomes rougher than it was before. A final test maybe, a final confession – this is what I am, this is what I offer. 

It’s not needed. Will knows. His body knows what Hannibal offers in anger and what he offers in love. It blooms under Hannibal’s hands. They’re rough and gentle at the same time, and for a fraction of a second Will sees all the beauty they made from death. All the blood they shed.

He snaps out of it when Hannibal bites him on the shoulder, hard enough to leave a bruise. But that’s fine. He asked for it, didn’t he? 

The sound of naked skin slapping against naked skin is loud for a while as they push and pull, rolling around the bed. The sheets under them rumple and slip off the bed. “Did you fuck me in the Norman chapel of Palermo?” Will pants. He’s sweating in the dry air of the space heater. 

Hannibal chuckles roughly above him, dragging his cock over Will’s stomach and the scar there because he knows what that does to him. “No.”

“Why not?” Will gets another bite on the inside of his upper arm. “Is this all you want?” he asks, lifting his hips in a hard thrust. 

Hannibal stops moving for a moment, caught off guard. It’s enough for Will to twist out of his hold and grab his cock. He expects the gasp, the sudden stillness in Hannibal's body, but not for Hannibal to drop to the bed like he’s been shot. All Will has to do it spread the wetness at the tip of his cock and Hannibal’s breath stutters like he is drowning. Will knows that sound well, sees him surrounded by water and darkness, panting. But this time Hannibal isn’t in pain. He’s drowning because of Will’s touch, as if he couldn’t imagine what it would feel like.

“What do you want?” Will asks, straddling his thighs. 

“Anything you’d like to give.” Hannibal’s voice is deep, accent thicker. 

Will gentles his touch, the fingers of his other hand no longer clawing at skin. He presses his thumb to Hannibal’s lower lip, then strokes his cheek. “Choose something.”

“This,” Hannibal pants.

“There’s no turning back, you know,” Will tells him. He spits in his hand to make it better for Hannibal, strokes him from root to tip. “Not for you, not for me.”

Tears gleam in Hannibal’s eyes, but he doesn’t look away, doesn’t even blink. No doubt memorizing every detail, so he can revisit this whenever he wants to. His chest quivers with irregular breathing. “Will,” he gasps suddenly and comes. 

It's warm and sticky, most of it lands on Hannibal's stomach, some on Will's hand. Will uses a towel to wipe it off. He lies down on his side of the bed, listening to Hannibal’s labored breathing, a wave of his own arousal washing over him. “How did this happen in your memory palace?” he asks as Hannibal leans over him.

Hannibal doesn’t answer, instead choosing to kiss and lick and bite every inch of Will's skin once more. He lingers when he makes Will squirm or gasp, places a kiss to the base of Will's cock. His mouth slides from Will’s hip to his armpit. No pretense anymore, the purpose simple: touch, smell, feel. 

“I could never fully predict you,” Hannibal whispers in his ear. 

“All those years you spent there and you didn’t imagine this?” 

“No,” Hannibal says. “I couldn’t.”

“Not even a kiss?” Will asks. “Too preoccupied with murder fantasies.” 

Hannibal smiles. “Perhaps a kiss.”

“Show me.”

Hannibal places his hand on Will’s cheek like he did before slicing him open, then kisses him gently, keeping his teeth and tongue to himself. 

The chasteness of it makes Will want to bite and scratch so he can protect the tender feeling in his chest. “I want your mouth,” he says instead of dwelling on that feeling. He places his thumb to the base of his cock, pushing it away from his belly, so there’s no doubt what he means.

Hannibal pulls his hand away and slithers down his body. “You’re lovely when you’re honest.” 

“Yeah?” Will says. “I want you to choke on it.” 

Hannibal smirks. He gives Will very little time to adjust to the heat and suction of his mouth before his head starts bobbing over Will’s lap. His mouth is wet like he’s salivating for it, the noises he worked to cover up the last time, now obscene, just because Will asked for it. 

In seconds, Will’s clutching at the sheet, eyes rolled back in his head. He’s almost there when he feels Hannibal’s fingers rubbing against his hole. It’s unfamiliar enough to distract him from Hannibal’s mouth. His orgasm stalls, shivering in his lap, confused. The sexual drive in him usually concentrated on giving, hips thrusting into his own hand, or rutting against the mattress.

This is different. 

He spreads his legs a little more, feels that hunger at the center of him boiling over, and when he comes down Hannibal’s throat, all he can think about is how his body flutters where Hannibal’s fingertips rest, like it wants him inside. 

Hannibal is gentle with him afterwards, his hair messy and hanging over his eyes; maybe next time Will could put his hands in it, hold him where he wants him. 

He closes his eyes for a moment. 

They clean the bathroom and read before going to bed, but sleep doesn’t come easily to Will this night. It’s late when he sits up in bed with dry eyes. He’s warm and irritated by the silence of the house, by Hannibal’s uninterrupted sleep. Will watches him for a while, then carefully gets out of bed.

The house is cold and quiet. Will goes downstairs, not knowing where he’s heading until he’s in the living room, in front of the golden chair. Even in the darkness, it’s easy to see himself tied to it, maybe bruised and bleeding. For authenticity. 

Will picks the chair up and carries it to the basement. It’s sturdy and heavy, he has to stop twice on his way downstairs, but he manages to get there without too much noise. He puts the chair in the corner where he found the space heater and covers it with an old sheet. 

Back in the bedroom, Hannibal is still asleep. 

Will lies down next to him and closes his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

Will wakes up to an empty bed and soft music coming from downstairs. 

He shuffles to the bathroom for a long shower, dresses slowly, then goes to the kitchen for coffee. He heard Hannibal slip out of the bedroom earlier, but his own eyes wouldn’t open yet, heavy from a short night. They’re itchy and dry now – one would think his body is used to little sleep by now, seeing as he’s not particularly good at it, but his head still feels heavy every time. 

The kitchen is warm, the scent of bread baking lingers in the air. Will pours himself a cup of coffee and stands at the counter, looking out of the window above it. Hannibal he’ll face later. When he’s more awake. When he doesn’t see Hannibal’s body spread out under him, animated by pleasure, unguarded. His breath uncontrolled and his mouth scorching hot. Will isn’t small and still – 

“Jeez.” Will presses a hand to his eyes and shakes his head once to get rid of the thoughts. He takes a careful sip of coffee, then focuses on the snow outside.

It’s covering everything in a thick glistening blanket. Will doesn’t mind it. Cold he can handle; heat is what wears him out. He’s got enough of it in his body, always running too hot. It’s irritating when it seems to press in from the outside as well, when there doesn’t seem to be a barrier between his body and the world. He feels trapped by it, reminded of the stifling summers of his adolescence, the smell of motor oil and burning plastic, water reflecting the glaring sun. It’s all too clear then. 

He blinks and the images fall away. He’s back in their bright kitchen, looking at the sky, trying not to think about Hannibal’s mouth. 

The music from the living room gets louder for a moment, then it’s muffled again. By the time Will realizes what that means, Hannibal is already standing behind him. He doesn’t speak, but Will can feel his presence. It’s like the air between them is vibrating, charged. Will remembers his trip to the basement last night, and keeps his gaze on the window. “Morning.” 

Hannibal’s response is a soft kiss to Will’s nape. His broad chest slides against Will’s back, crowding him in against the counter, warm and strong. Will closes his eyes, leans back against him to soak up the warmth. No matter how often Hannibal touches him it still feels new. It still feels good. 

“Morning,” Hannibal whispers. His hand drops to Will’s hip. “Will you let me know if you need me to stop?”

Apparently, Will isn’t the only one who can’t stop thinking about it. He nods, even though he doesn’t know what Hannibal is planning. He can feel him getting ready to pounce, and hurries to put the mug down and out of the way. “You – uh,” he starts saying, but the words dissolve on his tongue when Hannibal smears one more kiss to his nape, then replaces his mouth with his hand and pushes Will down, fighting against the tension that rises in Will’s body. 

Years of training and police work, years of thinking about killing assure him that he could get away easily – a sharp dig in the ribs, a kick to the knee, stomping on Hannibal’s foot and throwing him off with his own weight. 

But he doesn’t want that. He braces himself on his forearms instead and waits.

The hand on the back of his neck slides up into his hair, fists it, pushes once more as if to say _stay_ , then slides to his waist. His pants and underwear are yanked down without warning, and before Will can react, Hannibal kneels behind him and buries his face between his cheeks. 

The sudden surge of blood in Will’s groin almost hurts. He slaps the counter top twice with the flat of his hand to distract himself from it. Anything to bear the heat that races up and down his legs and makes them wobbly within seconds. He presses his face willingly to the counter now, his mouth hanging open. Not a sound comes out of it at first. Then his breath returns to him; a gasp and another and soon he’s panting in time with the movement of Hannibal’s mouth. 

For a moment, he’s reminded of his teenage summers again, t-shirt stuck to his sweaty back, hands dirty. Hannibal hums against him and Will’s thoughts scatter, his thighs starting to shake. The tremor in his legs only stops when Hannibal pulls away. “Has no one ever done this to you?” 

“No.” Will gets the word barely through his clenched teeth. Maybe he’s still asleep and the overwhelming desire coming off Hannibal is a product of his dreams. His face heats when Hannibal makes him spread his legs a little more, squeezes his ass and just watches Will’s body struggle to relax for a while. Then his tongue is back at Will’s hole and the muscle tenses up once more, protective. It only prompts Hannibal to try harder, to replace the long licks across his hole with quick jabs that breach him. 

Oh, God. 

Will jerks away from his mouth, his knees bumping against the cabinets below, but Hannibal is quick to follow. When he has him pinned down again, he reaches for Will’s cock, as if to give him something familiar to focus on.

Will tries. He squeezes his eyes shut and prays for his climax, for an escape from this. When it doesn’t come, he stops fighting the pleasure and relaxes into it, which makes Hannibal hum in approval. He can push a little deeper, drag his orgasm out of him like this. His hand barely moves on Will’s cock. 

But it’s enough.

The gasps falling from Will’s mouth grow louder, his hips start jerking between Hannibal’s hand and mouth, taking what he needs until he comes with a loud groan, clutching at the counter. 

Hannibal cleans him with a soft handkerchief after and pulls his pants up, buckles them. He presses his forehead against Will’s shoulder, arms wrapped around him until Will’s breathing has calmed. “I’ll be right back,” he tells him after a while. 

Will walks to the table on weak legs and slumps down in a chair, sweaty, still feeling Hannibal’s touch. He takes a deep breath. 

“Can you eat?” Hannibal asks, suddenly behind him again and smelling of mint. His mouth is obscenely red. He brings over plates that he kept warm and places them on the table. Scrambled eggs with sausage. The meal they first shared together. 

With other people, Will wouldn’t think twice about it, but food to Hannibal means more than it does to others. Will tries to remember the exact date they met, but that isn’t it. He watches Hannibal, his careful hands as he pours them coffee. It’s possible then that Hannibal saw the empty space in the living room and realized what it meant to Will, what he let it turn into. Maybe it meant the same to Hannibal. 

Will picks up his fork and digs in. “What are you smiling at?” He doesn’t have to look up to know it’s true. “I can almost hear it.”

“I’m not trying very hard to conceal it.” Hannibal’s lips curl into a full smile when Will looks up. “You said I could do whatever I want. Was this not something you expected?” 

“I don’t know what I expected,” Will says. 

“I’ll admit it was an impulsive decision.” Hannibal’s eyes travel down Will’s body and make Will consider the clothes he’s wearing, maybe for the first time in his life. A wool sweater on top of a plaid shirt, jeans – nothing out of the ordinary. And Hannibal still did that. Will clears his throat.

Hannibal is silent for a while, looking down at his plate without touching his food. “I couldn’t imagine having you, but I saw glimpses of you.” 

Will swallows his mouthful of eggs, but doesn’t know what to say. He nods instead, thinks of the empty space where the golden chair sat. 

Hannibal tells him again in bed that night, whispers it against the back of his head when Will asks what he saw. A kiss and Will’s hands. He doesn’t try anything, but his words are enough to light a fire low in Will’s belly, despite their chasteness, or maybe because of it. They follow him into his sleep, reshape their past so that there’re kisses instead of wounds, joy instead of anger, their love without betrayal. 

He wakes up gasping. 

“Will?” 

Will clenches his eyes shut for a second and tries to pull himself together, but in his sleep-addled mind he doesn’t find any reason for that. Hannibal is a wall of heat behind him, like he was in his dream and Will wants to burn, so he pushes back against him instead, presses his ass against Hannibal’s crotch until he feels him harden, until Hannibal’s hand drops to his hip to stop the languid movement. Hannibal’s breath is hot on his shoulder. “Will,” he whispers again. 

It’s early, Will realizes, still dark outside. “’m awake.” He pulls his underwear down, waits for Hannibal to do the same, and when he pushes back against him this time, it’s skin on skin. Their bodies are warm from sleep, still lazy, but they move with intent under the covers, letting the fire in their bellies build. 

Will presses one hand to his scar, the other to his mouth. He pants against it, rubs at his scar until his cock rises. “I – I expected you to sleep naked.” His voice is a husky mess in the darkness. 

Hannibal exhales loudly. “I do normally.” He pushes his cock against the swell of Will’s ass, leaves wetness behind. “I thought you’d object.” 

Will should, with how easy they go down this path every time, but he can’t find it in himself. Not right now, not when Hannibal puts his cock between his thighs. He has to stop touching himself and breathe through the sensation of having Hannibal there, sliding against sensitive skin, pulling his cheeks apart. He’d like that, more of it. If not for the physical act, he’d love to see Hannibal respond to having him and being allowed to be inside him. 

But that’ll have to wait. All Will can think of is Hannibal’s heat around him. 

He turns his upper body towards Hannibal, their noses bumping. He can’t see much, but he doesn’t have to see for this. He presses his lips to the corner of Hannibal’s mouth and feels instead – softness first, then the prickle of stubble. Will bites at it, moves up to Hannibal’s ear to take the soft earlobe between his teeth, kiss the curve of it. “Hannibal, I want to fuck you,” he whispers. “Can I?” 

Hannibal’s hips jerk once more. “Yes.” He pulls away. The opening and closing of a drawer is loud, then Hannibal gets ready to get up. 

Will stops him before he knows what he’s doing. “Let me do it.” 

Hannibal is reluctant to give him the lube, but does it in the end, unable to resist any request, it seems, when it comes to this. He lies back, makes room for Will between his legs. 

Will is barely in when he understands his hesitation – Hannibal struggles to stay quiet, his breath coming out in rough gasps. His hips move in short thrusts, the smooth tight heat of his body sinking on Will’s finger. He wasn’t this responsive before – but then again, Will barely touched him the last time they did this. 

Will fumbles for the bottle of lube, pours more onto his fingers to make sure he doesn’t hurt him. The slide is easier and Hannibal’s breath quickens. It still takes a while before Hannibal’s body accepts more.

As Will works him open, the sky turns a little brighter – enough for him to see Hannibal’s parted mouth, his heaving chest and steady gaze. 

“That’s enough,” Hannibal says abruptly. He’s impaled on Will’s middle and ring finger, his own hands holding onto the sheets. “How do you want me?” He studies Will for a long moment. “On my hands and knees perhaps?”

Whatever he sees on Will’s face – maybe the slackening of his jaw – makes him smirk and turn over. 

Will can only stare at the curve of his back and hurry. He smears more lube on himself and pushes in slowly, not moving until Hannibal pushes back. Then Will starts thrusting his hips and loses himself in the evidence of Hannibal’s pleasure – the sharp gasps falling from his mouth, the tremor of his hips in Will’s hands, the yielding of his muscles. Hannibal’s body is soft and hard at the same time under his hands. Will closes his eyes and sets a steady pace.

There doesn’t seem to be a particular rhythm Hannibal likes; every movement of Will’s hips makes him either gasp or sigh. Will experiments nonetheless, gives him long slow strokes that make Hannibal’s shoulders shake, then quicker ones that heat his own face with how good they are. 

Whatever he offers, Hannibal takes it like he is starving for it. 

Will thinks about asking him how much he likes it, wants to know if Hannibal feels him afterwards. He leans down to pant the words against Hannibal’s neck, but what comes out of his mouth is something he’s thought about for a while now, “I – I don’t think anyone’s ever wanted me this much.” It’s intoxicating to have this kind of effect on him, especially when Hannibal responds so plainly: tightening around him, sinking down to his elbows after a series of hard thrusts, his gasps turning harsh. 

Will claws at Hannibal’s hips to hold them up, in place. “Are you close?” 

Hannibal nods. 

“Come on,” Will says. He straightens his back and slows down. “I want to see.” 

Hannibal comes almost the instant he starts touching himself. He doesn’t make any sound, but he crumbles from the force of his climax, his knees giving out. 

Will has to follow quickly, plaster himself to his back to keep him filled. His own orgasm surges through him only seconds later, unable to hold on as Hannibal’s body tightens around him. The last couple of thrusts are wetter than before and so good, Will’s eyes roll back in his head. 

He tries to keep his weight off Hannibal as they catch their breath and fails, but Hannibal doesn’t complain. He grabs Will’s thigh to keep him close as they roll on their sides, and Will shudders once more at the realization that Hannibal wants him to stay inside. 

He does as he is asked, puts his face on Hannibal's nape. When he softens and slips out, he uses his boxers for the clean-up and Hannibal is apparently fucked out enough to allow it. 

They fall asleep as the morning sky turns bright. 

Later, they shower and have breakfast and after the little housework they agree on for the day, they stop pretending they have anything else to do and end up in bed again. Will is reminded of the weekend after his wedding and quickly pushes those thoughts away. He’s surprised he can get it up after his orgasm this morning, but here he is, on his back, legs spread, pushing his hips up into Hannibal’s hand. 

Hannibal seems content with just looking at him this time, his fingers move as if they’re trying to learn the shape of him by heart, as if they want to be able to identify him blindly. He touches the pink skin on the head of Will’s cock, then further down his shaft where that vibrant pink turns into paler skin. “I would’ve liked to see you whole,” Hannibal says. 

It takes a moment for Will to understand what Hannibal is talking about. “I was an infant.”

“Did it scare you? That you were different here, too?”

Will’s toes curl as Hannibal spreads the pre-come that gathered at the tip of his cock. “It’s not uncommon.” His voice shakes only a little. 

“It’s a once in a lifetime experience.” 

Will tries to think back to the moment he realized that he didn’t have full control of his body, but he can’t remember. If anything, it made sense that his body was different when his brain and the way he wanted others, all at once, was different. 

“’Masturbation weakens the memory, makes a boy careless, negligent and listless.’” Hannibal sounds amused. Whatever he is quoting, Will can’t think clearly enough to try and place it. “I guess it had less to do with preventing masturbation and more with _ah_.” He clamps his mouth shut, then tries again. “Health.” 

Hannibal smirks. “It has benefits, I agree,” he says. “But if too much skin is removed, pain can occur during intercourse and masturbation.” 

Will pants through a couple quick strokes. “No pain.” 

“No.” Hannibal bends down, traces the pink skin with his tongue and effectively drives out any thoughts Will had. “I believe my mouth gives you the most pleasure,” he says before opening it and taking the head of Will’s cock between his wet lips, the tip of his tongue playing at the slit. He doesn’t break eye-contact as he does it and Will can only nod. 

Hannibal’s mouth was the root of his problems, his downfall. Now Will owns it. It’s his to do with as he likes. He puts one hand in Hannibal’s hair, pulls him further down his cock, quickly at first to hear him struggle against the intrusion, then slow and gentle. Hannibal’s eyes close. 

“You like it when I’m gentle with you,” Will says. He hisses at the scrape of teeth on his shaft. “You _do_. And you like my hands on you.” 

Hannibal pulls off. “It’s –” He licks his lips.

“Intimate,” Will finishes for him. 

“Yes.” Hannibal smiles before he takes him in his mouth again. All of Will’s doubts about his ability to come again vanish – he’s close already. He puts his head back, concentrates on his breath instead of the rush of blood through his veins. His eyes open when he feels Hannibal pour lube over him and move up, that mouth of his sliding from Will’s groin to his jaw, leaving a wet trail on his skin. It stops on the scar on Will’s forehead. “What does this feel like?” 

“Nothing– like, like a scar, I guess.” 

Hannibal presses their hips together, takes them both in his gorgeously slick hand. He puts his mouth on Will’s throat next as if to feel his heartbeat there, the life he almost took all those years ago. Will can hear his thoughts: if Jack had arrived earlier, if the police had arrived later– 

When Hannibal leans up his eyes are wild, too much to bear. Will has to look away, down his straining body at Hannibal’s hand around them, at the slick redness of them both, their flesh engorged with desire, life thrumming through their bodies. 

He comes with a groan, shaking from it. 

When the last wave of his orgasm washes over him, he reaches down to take over, to give Hannibal his hand and make it good for him, too. He pulls Hannibal’s foreskin up over the head, then lets it slide down, smiles up at Hannibal as he does it. 

“ _Will_.” Hannibal keeps his gaze on Will’s face. Even as he comes, breath stuttering and arms shaking, he doesn’t look away. 

\- 

Early the next morning, Will slips out of Hannibal’s embrace and gets dressed for a walk. Hannibal watches him from the bed with hungry eyes, his body relaxed, willing to give Will anything he wants, but he’ll go crazy if he doesn’t get out. 

“Later,” Will tells him before he leaves.

The snow reaches up to Will’s calves and is untouched apart from the traces he leaves behind. Will takes his time, walks his usual route, his steps unsure in the snow every so often. By the time he reaches the tree trunk, he is panting, the cold air and deep snow demanding more energy than he expected. But the restlessness in his body is not satisfied yet, so he walks around the tree trunk and further down the path. The woods are eerily silent under the blanket of snow, the only sound the crunch of his boots on snow. He looks around for company and sees tree after tree, their dark bark standing out in the brightness of the snow. Slowly, they thin out and the uneven ground turns into a flat field. 

Will stops when a house comes into view. One side of it is almost entirely made of glass, the lights inside on. Behind the short fence, Will sees movement; white fur that looks yellowish surrounded by snow. He moves closer and recognizes the limp, the same dark collar around the neck. It’s the dog he saw before, a White Shepherd. It seems to notice him at the same time a man steps to the windows, looking down in Will’s direction. He’s young, dark-haired and pale. 

Will lifts a hand in greeting and turns around without waiting for a reaction. 

Back at home, he finds Hannibal in the living room, standing at the bookshelf. “How much do you know about our neighbors?” 

Hannibal shakes his head. “Nothing at all.” He puts a book away, takes another. “Why?” 

“I – I saw him – or someone and wondered,” Will stops speaking as he registers the books spread on the desk in the corner, the coffee table, some on armchairs. “What are you doing?”

“This needed sorting.” 

They stand in silence for a moment, Hannibal eventually turning back to his work. “You were asking about our neighbor,” he says. “Was he rude?” 

“No,” Will says. He takes his sweater off, still hot from the walk and sits down in an armchair. “He wasn’t rude, Hannibal.”

“Good.” 

Will shakes his head and watches Hannibal work, his fingers trailing over books, the curve of his back when he crouches down, the tension in his legs. 

Will wants him with an intensity that makes his fingers shake. 

He looks at Hannibal’s tidy clothes, his hair and clean shaven jaw, and he can’t quite believe that the gasps he can still hear inside his head came from Hannibal, that Will can make him sound like that with his touch. 

“Can you,” Will says, voice trailing off. How does he ask for something so intimate? One part of him wants to resist, because he knows it excites Hannibal to have Will spell everything out for him, but Hannibal’s focus zeroes in on him. He puts the book he’s holding aside, attentive, and Will flushes. He wants him more than he wants to resist.

“Yes?” 

Will licks his lips. “I want your – fingers in me. I want to know what it’s like.” He has to admit that being this explicit comes with a certain kind of thrill. He can see Hannibal react to it; his fingers drumming against his thigh once, his chest expanding with a deep breath. It’s a loop of giving and taking for both of them, it seems. 

Will stands. “I should shower.” 

“Don’t,” Hannibal says. He steps closer, presses his nose to Will’s damp neck. “You smell exquisite.” 

Upstairs, he keeps pressing his nose to Will’s skin as he undresses him, inhaling loudly. He looks drunk by the time he pushes Will down onto the bed and takes him in his mouth, his enthusiasm a little overwhelming. In no time, Will is clutching at Hannibal’s shoulders, his insides hot and tight, “Hannibal –” he gasps, but Hannibal keeps going, his mouth soft and wet around him, his tongue quick. He only stops when Will tenses up, ready to fall.

“Oh, God.” 

Hannibal waits for Will to back off the edge before he spreads his legs. “Flattery won’t get you anywhere.” His fingers are dry against Will’s hole at first, then he adds lube and slowly works one in. 

Will moves his hips a little. “Okay,” he says. 

Hannibal smiles at him. “Give it a little time.” He adds a second finger after a moment and the stretch becomes tighter and more distracting. Will relaxes around the intrusion when Hannibal sucks his cock again, and the next time he moves his hips to see what it’s like, Hannibal’s fingers are buried deep inside him. 

“That’s–” 

“Better?” 

“I uh.” The words get stuck in Will’s throat when Hannibal pulls his fingers out a little, then presses them back in. Will hums. 

“Now?” Hannibal asks, rubbing his prostate.

Will’s back arches, heat spreading through his lower abdomen. He can’t decide if he likes it or not, but Hannibal gives him more nonetheless. He plays with him, alternating between thrusting his fingers and rubbing his prostate. Will’s cock jerks and spits pre-come after a while. He looks down at himself, at Hannibal’s wild eyes. He’s never been this wet before, and with Hannibal’s persistent touch, his orgasm is suddenly within reach, even though his cock lies untouched on his belly. “C-coming,” he gasps. 

Almost.

Seconds stretch into minutes and he still doesn’t come. His body is teetering on the edge. Every nudge of Hannibal’s fingers feels like it might bring him release, but it only leaves his thighs shaking and his hands grasping at the sheets. 

Hannibal’s mouth hovers over his cock, then his scar. 

“Oh, don’t,” Will whispers. 

Hannibal has mercy on him. He bites at one nipple, kisses his throat, then presses their foreheads together. “Is it good, Will?” Another slick finger joins the others, sinking slowly in. “Is it good?” 

“Yes.” 

Their mouths meet in a messy kiss that ends with them both panting. Hannibal sounds as if he’s the one about to come. He presses closer, his sweater and wool pants rubbing against Will’s skin and only reminding him of the sweaty mess he’s made of himself again. 

“I want to taste you,” Hannibal says, moving down.

Will stops him. “I’m going to come.” He licks his lips. “Can you – like this, just a little longer?” For the moment, his curiosity wins over the need to come. 

“Remarkable boy,” Hannibal whispers, a look of adoration on his face. He presses a hard kiss to Will’s panting mouth and gives him what he asks for – quick thrusts and gentle rubs against his prostate, too little to make him come. 

In the end, Will can only take it for a few more moments, then he pushes him down. 

Hannibal sucks the head of his cock into his mouth, wraps his free hand around the base of it, and Will can’t hold on. He comes against the quick twirl of Hannibal’s tongue. The fingers inside him turn his pleasure into something new, something bright. He feels himself clenching around them for a long time. 

Between the orgasm and the walk, Will can hardly move once the tension leaves his body. He slumps back to the bed when Hannibal stops touching him and keeps his eyes closed. 

“I’ll bring you something to eat,” Hannibal says against his temple. 

Will must doze off for a while. The next time he’s aware of his surroundings, he’s covered up and there’s a tray on the night table. Hannibal pulls up a chair to the bed, his hair combed back again, his clothes fixed. The only evidence left is his swollen mouth. “How do you feel?” he asks.

Will reaches for the glass of water on the night stand before he sits up fully. He downs it in two gulps and takes a deep breath afterwards. “Good.” 

Hannibal smiles, apparently taking pride in reducing Will to this. 

“Sorry,” Will gestures to the bed. 

Hannibal places the tray over his lap. “Eat.” 

The food, as always, looks delicious. Creamy broccoli soup, by the smell of it. Knowing Hannibal, though, there’s probably a twist in the recipe that Will wouldn’t know how to follow. The slice of bread next to the bowl is crisp. Will dips a chunk of it into the soup and takes a bite. “I don’t think anyone’s wanted me as much as you do.” He gives Hannibal time to disagree, even though he knows it won’t happen. “It’s contagious.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “I want you all the time.”

That makes Hannibal stir, cross his legs and look away, down at Will’s hands. “Is that so bad?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You could leave,” Hannibal suggests after a moment of silence. “See if anything brings you back. And what that would be.” He doesn’t sound convinced that a separation is possible. A couple weeks ago, he wouldn’t have been this sure of himself, he wouldn’t have brought it up. Whatever reservations he had before, they are gone now – which is good. They share each other’s company simply because a world where that’s not the case isn’t enough anymore. 

“We tried that already, in our own ways,” Will says. An image of his old home crosses his mind, of Hannibal and Bedelia. He tries to ignore it, but it lingers until it’s all he sees. Then, Hannibal’s broken heart flashes before his eyes, his design to lure him in. 

“This is better,” Will says. 

Hannibal smiles. “I agree.”


	7. Chapter 7

“Your scent has changed.” Hannibal’s hands are gentle in Will’s damp hair, combing out strands of it and cutting the ends off. He stops for a moment, leans down to inhale. “Just like you have.” 

They’re in the bathroom, the heater at full blast. Will sits bare-chested in a chair, a towel draped over his upper body. His head and neck buzz from repeated light touches. Every so often, Hannibal’s fingers brush his ears and the warmth spreads down to his shoulders and arms.

“When I first met you, it was sweet,” Hannibal continues. 

“Sweet.” Will frowns. “Sweet like a rose?” He can’t imagine he gave off a more striking scent than that of his dogs and occasionally fish or motor oil. 

“Like caramelized sugar, actually,” Hannibal says. “Almost burnt. It was sweetest when you didn’t mask it with medication.” 

Realization dawns on Will. His short laugh sounds bitter. “When my brain was on fire.”

“Yes.”

Will sighs. “An acute sense of smell and still can’t smell your own bullshit.” 

“Olfactory fatigue. One cannot smell one’s own bullshit. Our brains are designed to detect new scents in case they signal danger, but they get used to familiar ones.” Scissors slide against the back of Will’s neck, pausing briefly. “You should know,” Hannibal says. “The scent of killers clung so closely to you that you needed someone else to identify it as your own.” 

“Still full of bullshit,” Will mutters. 

Hannibal chuckles softly. 

The only sound for a while is that of scissors cutting, then Hannibal takes the towel off Will’s shoulders and wipes his neck and shoulders with a warm cloth. “Et voilà.” His fingertips drag over Will’s scalp, comb through his hair one more time. 

“Thanks,” Will says, suppressing a shiver. He puts his sweater on and walks over to the mirror to look at himself. It’s his usual haircut, short enough now that hair doesn’t fall into his eyes, which is really all he wanted. Hannibal parted it so the scar on his forehead isn’t hidden. The one on his cheek healed into a thin line thanks to Hannibal’s tending. It leaves a patch of naked skin in his beard. When Will trims it, the scar is barely noticeable from afar. 

“Everything to your liking?” Hannibal asks. 

“Yes.” Will sits down in the chair again, watching Hannibal finish the cleanup and put everything aside. “How do I smell now?” he wonders.

“Content,” Hannibal says without hesitation. He steps closer and puts his hands on Will’s shoulders, bends down to press his nose to Will’s temple. “It’s getting harder to distinguish your scent from my own.” One of his fingers strokes the soft skin behind Will’s ear and the tingling sensation returns to Will’s skin. “We’re blurring,” Hannibal says, nose sliding along Will’s throat. He inhales deeply, his voice rough when he speaks again. “Except for that – something that is uniquely _you_.” The kiss he presses to Will’s mouth is slow and deep. He breaks it with a sigh and too quickly for Will’s liking, still not used to this simple give and take, apparently. 

Will stops him with an arm around his waist. 

“Will–” 

Hannibal said something about dinner preparation before, but dinner can wait, Will decides. “Sh-shh.” He slides forward on the chair. Seated on the edge of it, he can spread his thighs for Hannibal and pull him closer. “Stay,” he whispers against Hannibal’s shirt. He rubs his face against it, feels Hannibal’s belly move under his cheek with his breath. 

A touch of skin and stubble and cloth, small but loud. 

If Will presses a little closer, he can hear Hannibal’s quickened heartbeat that matches his own. They are indeed blurring and mingling. Scents and bodies and minds. It started years ago and Will doesn’t know where it’ll stop. He listens to Hannibal’s heartbeat for a while, then hurries to push layers of fabric out of the way and press his face against warm skin.

He inhales clean heat and a hint of musk that makes his mouth drop open. 

In his hand, Hannibal’s cock hardens. 

Will unfasten his own pants and reaches inside to soothe himself a little. He can’t pull away from Hannibal to do anything else about it. He feels intoxicated by his scent, all heated up. He bites at the soft flesh of Hannibal’s belly, opens his mouth against it and breathes. Then the urge to taste overrides everything else. He holds Hannibal in place and leans down to show him how hot his mouth is for him, how wet. 

Above him, Hannibal shudders. His hand lands in Will’s hair, tightening a little when Will pulls his foreskin down to lap at the wetness there. The bitter taste of it makes Will gasp, makes his own cock throb. He goes as far down as he can without gagging and sucks. 

Hannibal exhales loudly but doesn’t move otherwise, willing to take whatever he is offered, apparently. 

Will pulls off with a loud wet noise. “Does this do anything for you?” He wants to hear Hannibal say it even though his arousal is evident. He looks up at him for the first time since he started this just to feel him tremble. 

Hannibal is still perfectly put together, except where Will is doing his best to take him apart. There’s redness on his cheeks, at least, and it deepens when Will speaks. “I’ve never done this before.” 

“It’s perfect,” Hannibal says, eyes closed. 

Will breathes his amusement against him, traces the veins on the shaft with his tongue. He’ll have to give him more than this to make him come. They’re similar in size, so Will certainly can’t do the things Hannibal does to him, but he can slide his mouth over the head, suck him down half-way, cover the rest with his hand. It’s a challenge to keep his teeth out of the way and his lips tight. His jaw starts aching after a while; a small discomfort given the whirl of excitement in his body. He sucks a little harder, lets the tip of Hannibal’s cock press against the raised flesh of his scar and touches the bulge in his cheek from the outside. 

“Will.” The taste in his mouth turns bitter. “I’m very close.”

Will pulls away to speak. “Go for it.” 

“If it’s not enjoyable for you –” 

Will leans back to show him his cock, straining up from his open pants and wet. “Give it to me,” he says because he knows what it’ll do to Hannibal. He’d laugh at how easily he can read him if it weren’t for the suddenly tight grip in his hair, pulling him forward, and Hannibal’s cock stretching his mouth wide.

Heat sparks in Will’s groin. He takes himself in hand and starts a quick rhythm, no finesse to his movements at all. He’s downright sloppy, reveling in the slick sounds they make. 

When the first hot spurt of Hannibal’s release hits his tongue, Will comes in his own hand, swallowing everything Hannibal gives him and licking at him until Hannibal pulls away and goes down to his knees. 

It’s impressive that he held out so long. If their roles had been reversed, Will would’ve been on the floor already. Then Hannibal catches his wrist and lifts his hand to lick it clean, and Will’s thoughts come to a halt. With his nerve endings still alight, he feels the gentle strokes of Hannibal’s tongue in his entire body. He slumps back into the chair with a deep sigh and touches his own mouth. 

It feels hot and bruised. 

-

Will has been going through the house, searching for something to do to kill time. He’s up in the bedroom, fastening a loose switch and debating whether or not he should go for a run. With the snow still thick and icy on the ground he wouldn’t get far, but his body is buzzing with energy. A walk then; he could go out as far as the last time. Maybe Hannibal would like to come.

He’s finishing up his work when he hears a loud knock from downstairs. He dismisses it as Hannibal sorting his books until he hears voices. 

Everything narrows down to his heartbeat and its sudden pounding. He tries to listen through the rush of blood in his ears but can’t make out anything besides Hannibal’s welcoming tone and a chuckle from an unfamiliar voice. 

The exchange only takes a minute or two. 

Will goes downstairs after another and finds Hannibal in the kitchen, looking at a basket full of fruit and the card attached to it. 

“So I didn’t imagine it.” 

Hannibal smiles at him. “No.” He carefully puts the card on the counter, aligned with its edge. “You asked about our neighbors, I’m getting to know them.”

Will’s exhale is loud. “Why?” He closes his eyes for a moment to withstand the whirl of emotion in his chest. 

“They made a lasting impression on you. I was curious why.”

“I saw a young man.” Will shrugs. “Nothing more.”

“That would be the son.” 

“Tell me why you know that,” Will says. They spend every day together and sleep in the same bed, so it’s easy to pinpoint the day Hannibal satisfied his curiosity – Will was lying on the couch with a book in his lap, half-asleep, and Hannibal’s suggestion to go grocery shopping alone was more than welcome. 

“A chance encounter at the butcher’s shop,” Hannibal confirms. He picks out two oranges from the basket and smell them. “The husband is not particularly interesting. Ava is an artist. Easy to find online when you know what to look for. And the young man you saw is their teenage son.”

Will leans against the counter and picks up the card. “Did you convince her you're an avid fan?”

“An aspiring artist.” 

“Aspiring?” Will asks. 

Hannibal smirks. He cuts into the orange three times, precise and quick, then spreads it open and holds a slice up for Will. The skin is broken, the flesh hanging out shiny and wet, plump with juice. 

Will leans down and bites a chunk off, his mouth pressed to Hannibal’s wet fingers, sweet and sour taste spreading on his tongue. “Good,” he says. 

Hannibal tastes for himself and nods. He removes the pith and puts the slices in a glass bowl, hands wet. 

Will looks away before he gives into the urge to lick them clean. He fiddles with the heavy card in his hands. “What did you tell them about me?” he asks after a moment of silence. Their fake names are both written on thick paper. 

“Half-truths.” 

“You’re good with those.” Will rereads the card; an invitation to attend a gathering on Friday at 7 PM. “This would put my social skills to the test.” 

“Gatherings like this only require small talk.” 

“Not my strong suit.”

“You could always follow my lead.” 

Will resists making a face at the suggestion and puts the card away. He watches Hannibal peel another orange. After months of having only him around, the idea of a roomful of people is unpleasant, more so than usual. “If they catch us, we’re not coming out alive.” He considers his words. “Or at least you aren’t.” 

Hannibal nods, looking down at his task. “I imagine Jack sees you every time he lays his head on a pillow. A broken marriage and a fatherless child, all his doing. He must find it easier to let you rest with the dead than allow to be haunted by what might have happened to you.”

Will drags a hand over his prickly jaw. “I guess the haunting is happening either way,” he says. “But I’m not talking about Jack. He’s – he isn’t part of this anymore.” A single case can only take that much accidents without consequences.

“I agree and he was the one who captured the Chesapeake Ripper, only it wasn’t his own accomplishment. When it comes to me, they’re blind without you,” Hannibal says. “No reason to dwell on improbable scenarios.”

One part of Will knows it all to be true, another doesn’t want to give up the peace and quiet of this place. “I’m curious, too,” he says. “What are you planning?”

“A pleasant evening.” 

-

Will looks at himself in the mirror: white shirt, blue suit – _noticeably_ blue, not something Will would’ve chosen himself. But Hannibal stands behind him, watching with an approving smile. “It brings out the color of your eyes.”

Will puts his coat on and gets the keys. 

The route by car is a detour, but the shorter one through the woods is not suitable for vehicles. Will doesn’t mind prolonging the wait. The closer they get, the tighter his hands go around the steering wheel. He navigates the car carefully on the dark road, mindful of the snow heaped up along both sides of the way, glaringly white in the headlights. 

They arrive on time. Will leaves the car a little further away from the others for an easy escape route should he need one, then takes a look at the property; the house is alight as if to make up for the fact that it’s nestled in the dark woods, the curving driveway illuminated by lanterns. Through the many windows, Will sees some of the other guests. 

More than a roomful of people then. Will can’t decide if that’s better or worse. Either way, it’s too late to do something about it. 

Ava is a tall woman with dark curly hair and an aura of confidence that must come from her profound understanding of makeup and fashion and, most evidently, from experiencing the good side of life. The skin around her eyes wrinkles when she smiles. Her handshake is strong and warm, a foreign accent Will can’t place softening her words.

She leads them through the foyer into a spacious room. The house is what Will would’ve imagined had he bothered; all polished marble floors and dark wood, clean and sharp. Will has a distinct urge to smash the floor-to-ceiling windows. It's as old as he was when he came to understand the difference money makes. 

Sometimes it blooms in his chest when he looks at Hannibal. 

The other guests stand in groups, talking and nursing their drinks. Soft music mixes with their voices. Will sees friendly smiles and curious looks. At the center of the room a group opens up to them. 

Hannibal puts a warm hand on the small of Will’s back when Ava introduces them. “My partner in crime,” he adds, evoking a friendly ripple of laughter. 

Will forces his lips to stretch into a smile, shakes hands when he needs to, and is the first to reach for a glass of champagne when he gets it offered. He reminds himself to drink it in small sips and pay attention to the conversations around him. 

They move slowly through the room, Will looks at the row of paintings along one wall rather than the faces around him. It doesn’t take long for the murmur of voices and the soft music to bore him. He steps away from the circle of people. “Excuse me,” he says, lifting his empty glass as an explanation. 

In the foyer, he can breathe more easily. He hands his glass to a server rushing to the kitchen and spends a couple minutes admiring the tiles in the guest bathroom. When he gets out, he walks in the opposite direction of the noise, to the quieter parts of the house. 

The lights are dimmed here, a soft lamp bathing the room in amber hues. 

Will heads for the rows of books before a small curious bark stops him. It comes from inside the room. He steps closer and spots a cage to his right. The dog he saw before stands in it, looking up at him, tail wagging. The tag on his collar has Max written on it.

“Hi,” Will says, pressing fingers through the cage. “Hello, Max.” He gets a sniff and a lick before Max steps away and blinks up at him, waiting for Will to let him out apparently. His movements are still impaired by a limp.

Will sits down on the floor. “What happened to you?” he wonders. He checks the latch on the cage and finds it locked. “Sorry,” he says. “Can’t let you out.” 

There are two bowls in the cage, both empty. Will is considering filling one up with water when someone clears their throat. 

“Sir?” 

It’s one of the servers, standing in the doorway with a tray full of glasses and looking awkward. 

Will spares him the unpleasantness of asking him to leave and steps away from the cage. “I think he needs to go for a walk,” he says, taking another glass of champagne. 

He goes back to the main room and finds Hannibal still talking to Ava, standing alone with her in front of one of her paintings. Will walks up to them, nods his head in greeting, and listens to their opinions on color and light and pencil drawing. During a pause in the discussion he clears his throat. “Your dog is hurt,” he says. “What happened?”

Ava looks confused but only for a moment, then her eyes shine with sympathy. “Oh, he ran out into the street,” she says. “Got hit by a car.” 

“Lucky duck,” Will says, watching Hannibal’s amused smile.

The rest of the evening passes in the same way – friendly conversations about art and politics and the weather. Occasionally, people ask about their lives and Hannibal puts his hand on Will’s lower back and tells their story, only leaving out the bloody parts. 

-

Under the shower back at home, Will still hears snatches of those conversations and Max’s little bark. The hot water helps only a little to clear his head. 

He takes his time.

When he’s done, he finds Hannibal in bed already, chest bare. “Are you hungry?” Hannibal asks. “You didn’t eat.” 

“I felt like drinking.” 

Hannibal watches him towel his hair dry. “Is it easier living with what you’ve done when it’s only us in this house?”

Will isn’t prepared for such a blunt question, not this late in the evening and with Hannibal in a good mood. His expression is still the same perpetually amused one he carried the entire evening. Will wants to wipe it off his face. He sighs and searches for words. “My thoughts are easier to handle when I know there’s no reason to indulge in darker ones.” He looks at Hannibal. “Picking up the old scent again, Hannibal?”

“You’ll be happy to know you were the only rude person tonight. Walking off and snooping around.” 

“Would you rather have me stalk people? Is that something you don’t consider rude?”

Hannibal smiles a little wider. “Come here,” he says and Will goes, dropping the towel from his hips without hesitation. 

Hannibal kisses him once; a soft barely there touch of lips that makes Will bite down and push his tongue between Hannibal’s lips.

“Did you want to shut me up like this all evening?” Hannibal asks after breaking the kiss. He sounds a little breathless. “Or did you have something more debauched in mind?” 

Will didn’t. He doesn’t. He shakes his head, but the image Hannibal’s words evoke is more than appealing, especially tonight. “I–” The words dissolve on his tongue when Hannibal pulls him up and catches his soft cock between his lips. He makes a show of it; licking at the head before sucking it into his mouth.

Will grabs the headboard for support.

There’s something captivating about having Hannibal work to get him hard, his neck straining and turning red after a while, eyes closed in bliss, his face relaxing as if everything else in his head goes quiet. 

Will feels it, too – the outside world slipping away with every passing second, until it’s just their bodies and appetite. He wishes he could rein himself in a little longer, but it’s a lost cause. He gets hard so quickly, it leaves him breathless. 

“So good –” he whispers and gets a tight suck in response, then Hannibal puts his head back on the pillow and relaxes. Only the tip of Will’s cock stays between his pouty lips. Hannibal nudges it with his tongue, waiting, Will realizes, waiting for Will to fuck his mouth. 

Their eyes meet - he’s allowing it.

Will shivers through a wave of arousal, unmoving. 

Eventually, he lets his cock slide into the hot softness of Hannibal’s mouth and pulls back again. The angle isn’t quite right to get all the way in. Hannibal tries once or twice, greedy, and gags. His eyes get wet after a while, the soft skin under them glistening with tears. 

Will’s hips stutter. 

He won’t last. He can’t when it comes to Hannibal’s mouth. His hands tighten around the headboard, chest heaving. He stops himself before he can fall, pulls out and starts stroking himself. 

There's a twinkle in Hannibal's eyes. 

“What are you thinking?” 

Hannibal takes a deep breath. “Not much at this very moment,” he says, voice hoarse. 

“You said I was rude.” Will’s hips jerk forward, quickly filling Hannibal’s mouth before pulling back again. “Am I rude now?” 

“Terribly rude. Depriving me of your taste.” Hannibal leans up and licks a drop of pre-come off Will’s cock, then lies back against the pillow.

Will clenches his teeth. “Close – close your eyes,” he says, his free hand sliding up into Hannibal’s hair. He twists it in his fist when Hannibal doesn’t comply. It doesn’t help – Hannibal keeps watching him, makes him fight his orgasm until Will is shaking above him, his hand moving in quick tight motions on his cock. “Hannibal, p-please,” he whispers.

Hannibal’s face twists with emotion. He closes his eyes, leaves his mouth open and ready, and Will loses it instantly. 

The first two spurts of come splatter across Hannibal’s cheek and under his eye, the rest dribbles into his waiting mouth and onto his chin. Will’s body convulses at the sight of it – white on Hannibal’s overused red mouth. 

Hannibal licks it all up and swallows, then clears his throat. “Could you –?” 

Will stands on shaky legs. “Yes – just a moment.”

He fetches a cloth, holds it under hot water and cleans Hannibal’s face with the kind of gentleness he reserves for his strays. 

“Thank you,” Hannibal says, blinking up at him.

Will frowns. “Don’t thank me.” He leaves the cloth on the nightstand. “I’m not going to thank you for what you did.”

“I don’t expect you to. I enjoyed it very much,” Hannibal says. He pulls Will onto the bed and presses the evidence against his thigh. It’s distracting enough that Will ignores the questions he wants answers to, at least for a now. 

They touch lazily, lying face to face, their old lives like braille under their fingertips. Some of the marks are sensitive, others sunken and unfeeling. An entirely different kind of pleasure overtakes Will at exploring them, their touches simple and unhurried, at least for him – Hannibal is still half-hard against him. 

Will puts his mouth on Hannibal’s chest, the greying hair soft against his lips. “What do you want?” 

One of Hannibal’s hands slides slowly from Will’s throat down to his cock and balls, closing around them. Will has cooled down enough that it’s not entirely unpleasant, but he pushes Hannibal’s hand away when the grip gets too tight. “Shouldn’t have made it so good,” he says. Even if his body doesn’t react, the implication is alluring. He lingers on it, recalls the breathy gasps Hannibal made. “What does it feel like?”

“An exquisite ache.” Hannibal palms his ass and squeezes. “Did you enjoy my fingers inside you?”

Will nods.

“I enjoyed watching you,” Hannibal says, reaching for the lube in the nightstand. “Turn over.” 

Will does. Useless arousal grows in his belly. “I’m not sure–” he starts saying but Hannibal choses that moment to press slick fingers between his cheeks. Will bites at the pillow when one slides inside him, then presses his face into it at the precise touch to his prostate. 

It’s too soon, too much. 

Hannibal senses his struggle and eases off a little. His touch becomes gentle, barely there. The only evidence of it is the warmth spreading through Will’s groin with each passing second.

“If I continue this,” Hannibal says, “you might experience a climax of a different kind.” He kisses Will’s shoulder and neck, watches him breathe through the sensation. “Perhaps another time. When you aren’t as distracted as you are tonight.”

“You can help with that,” Will suggests. He has the urge to lift his hips for Hannibal’s touch but resists. 

“How would I do that?”

“Guess,” Will says, spreading his legs a little more.

Hannibal smiles, still rubbing gently. “If that’s what you want.”

“What I want? Meaning you don’t want it?” 

“Oh, I do.” 

The vehemence in Hannibal’s voice makes Will’s hips lift and take more of him. He grabs the sheets for support when Hannibal adds another finger and focuses on stretching him. 

He does it excruciatingly slowly, stopping again and again to add more lube. After a while, Will can’t keep his hips still, stretched around three of Hannibal’s fingers and half-hard again. He doesn’t beg for it, but his body is doing that already, legs spread, hips lifting and trying to create a rhythm. 

It seems to be enough. Hannibal pulls his fingers out gently and positions himself. The pressure against Will’s hole increases slowly. 

Will sighs. He looks at Hannibal over his shoulder, at the sweat on his skin and the hair falling into his eyes. He makes his voice breathy when he speaks: “Hannibal,” he says. “Just the tip.” He sees the exact moment Hannibal realizes what he means, his muscles straining as he stops moving altogether.

Will’s laugh is short and loud in the silence around them, breaking off when Hannibal leans down and puts his teeth on Will’s neck. “Wicked.”

“I’m not going to break,” Will says. 

He doesn’t. 

But his mouth drops open and his hands tighten in the sheets with every inch Hannibal gives him. It’s more than he expected. His body struggle to accept it, tensing. Then Hannibal urges him to his knees and splays his fingers over his scar. He hasn’t given it much attention tonight and the touch feels almost too much to bear now. 

Will presses his lips together to keep from shouting, but his body reacts, melting around Hannibal, the tight grip of his muscles easing. “Okay,” he says, voice thick. “Yes.” There’s no room for teasing anymore. He pushes back a little and the gentle motion sparks something inside him, makes him try harder the second time. Hannibal meets him half-way on the third thrust and Will can’t stop the sound he makes this time. 

They pull and push, find the right pace. Gentle and slow. Then Hannibal leans down, panting. “I want to see you.”

Will shakes his head, dropping it to the bed and watching the sway of his cock and balls, the way his thighs quiver. The constant pressure against his prostate made him wet; a clear string of pre-come dangles from the tip of his cock. “I want it like this,” he says, cheeks burning. He closes his eyes and finds a place of quietness in his head where nothing exists but this simple pleasure. All he has to do is breathe and take it. 

Hannibal lets him have it for a while longer, hands strong on his hips, then he pulls him up and makes him hold onto the headboard. One of his hands covers Will’s scar, the other drops to Will’s cock every now and then, stroking lightly until Will’s entire lower abdomen heats up. “Oh oh God,” Will whispers, just before his body seizes up, jerking in Hannibal’s hold. His muscles tighten around Hannibal, dragging the pleasure out until tears well up in his eyes from the force of it. 

It takes a while for his body to start relaxing. Will presses his forehead against the headboard and breathes.

Behind him, Hannibal is so tense he’s shaking. “Oh.” Will swallows and clears his throat. “Come on.” 

Hannibal shakes his head, panting. “I want to see you.” He pulls out gently and turns Will over to straddle his thighs. He looks truly debauched, skin sweaty and flushed, lips bitten red. There’s no trace of amusement left on his features. Finally. Now it’s just a different kind of hunger that wants to be sated. He has his own fingers in his mouth, licking Will’s come off, then he wraps them around himself and starts a quick rhythm. 

“You can – inside me,” Will offers, but Hannibal is coming already, straining his own skin and shaking. He drops to the bed when he’s done, his endless energy all gone. 

Will can relate. His own body feels raw, like it wasn’t designed for such intense pleasure. Traces of it still make him shiver. He reaches for the cloth to wipe them clean before he welcomes the bone-deep tiredness that creeps over him. 

Hannibal must feel the same. He is quiet as he leans over to turn the lights off, clumsy with the sheet. His hands find Will’s under the covers and pull him closer. 

They fall asleep facing each other. 

-

Will wakes up standing in a stream. His surprise at the discovery fades quickly; the sensation of cool water and the weight of a fishing rod in his hands feels like greeting an old friend. He looks at the surroundings; trees and grass a smudged green line along the banks of the river, the current quick and strong, glistening in the sun. 

Will takes a deep breath and smiles.


	8. Chapter 8

The kitchen is bright this morning, rays of sunlight covering everything in a yellow glow and making the cutlery and glasses on the table shimmer. Hannibal’s hands look soft in the light as he pours orange juice into two glasses and places one in front of Will.

They are up early despite the long night. Will is slow, though, his mind hanging onto his dream – that is until Hannibal starts speaking and Will’s attention zeroes in on his mouth. The words don’t make sense, the shape of Hannibal’s mouth does. It brings him back in their bedroom, to kneeling over Hannibal and taking what he wants. 

Heat pools in his belly at the thought. He tries to ignore it, and the struggle must show on his face — Hannibal stops speaking and puts his glass down. He waits until their eyes meet before he asks, “Do you still feel me?” 

Will does. A tender ache that he hasn’t felt before. It’s distracting. He wonders if this is what Hannibal felt like all this time? He clears his throat, his neck heating up. “Not exactly a topic for breakfast, don’t you think?”

Hannibal smiles and reaches for his hand across the table. He looks more than pleased now, spurred on by Will’s reaction. “I disagree,” he says, fingers sliding along the sensitive skin on the inside of Will’s wrist. “It’s intimate, like sharing food is intimate.” There is a spark in his eyes. “I would apologize, but it wouldn’t be sincere. I’m glad you let me make you feel good.”

Will hums and pulls his hand away to finally dig in. Hannibal’s little smile stays on his face the entire time. 

“It was good,” Will says after sating his empty stomach with a couple mouthfuls of brioche and eggs. “I liked how big and hot you felt inside me.” 

Hannibal stops with his fork half-way to his mouth in a short display of genuine surprise. Then he collects himself and continues eating. He looks at Will while he chews and swallows. “Glad I could be of service.”

“You know when you had me on my hands and knees,” Will looks down at his plate, shakes his head, “thought I would lose my mind.” 

Now Hannibal is the one clearing his throat. “That’s… good.” 

“Tell me what you liked about it.” 

“Having you,” Hannibal says, holding Will’s gaze until the lazy heat in Will’s belly becomes more persistent. “And making you feel good.” 

Under the table, Will puts his foot on Hannibal’s shin and pushes it up to his knee. “Tell me what you like when it’s the other way around.” 

“When you are fucking me?” 

Will stares for a moment, mouth hanging open. It’s ridiculous that a bit of vulgarity can make him blush after everything they’ve done. “Yeah,” he says eventually, letting his foot slide up Hannibal’s leg. “When I fuck you, what do you like most about it?” 

“Giving you my body to do with as you please.” The smile is gone now, Hannibal’s voice serious. “Getting all your desire in return.” He catches Will’s foot and presses his thumb into the arch, pushes his fingers into the pantleg.

Will pulls it out of his grip just so he can press it between Hannibal’s legs. Hannibal isn’t hard yet, but judging by the sharp intake of breath, he is getting there. “Can I really?” Will asks curious and a little breathless. A jolt of excitement rushes through him; he wants to see Hannibal naked, reduced to his desires, all of it because of him. “Can I do to you whatever I want?” 

Hannibal wraps both hands around Will’s ankle. “Do you really have to ask, Will?” His fingers tighten almost painfully. “Look at me.” He is flushed and rolls his hips up against Will’s foot like he can’t help himself, like a creature only made for pleasure. 

He has a point. 

Will smiles at him and takes his foot away. “Food's getting cold.” 

Hannibal’s only response is a deep sigh. His eyelids flutter and close as if he is hurt. Hurt that Will has stopped touching him. He gets up and walks over to Will, looking ready to drop to his knees at any moment. 

Will shakes his head and get a fist in his hair for it and a hot biting kiss. 

“Think you can put a leash on me, Will?” Hannibal says against his lips. “Pull in whatever direction you want to go?” 

“I already have a leash on you and you on me.” 

Hannibal’s hand tightens in Will’s hair. He kisses the side of his neck, his jaw, then straightens and looks over at the table. “Finish your breakfast. I’ll be right back.” 

“Don't —” Will stops himself before he can finish, bites his lip. His hand hangs in the air between them before he pulls it back. He can’t say it. He shouldn’t. 

Hannibal waits patiently. He is still hard. There is a wet spot on his pants, slowly drying. 

“Don't touch yourself,” Will says finally, his heart thumping in his chest. He feels breathless.

“I wasn’t going to.” 

“Yeah,” Will says. “But don’t.” He can see Hannibal considering the request, with all its implications and consequences. A hunger Will let himself only indulge in a couple of times in all the years they’ve known each other flares up in his chest. It comes all at once now; Hannibal is his, it’s only natural to want to decide here, too. 

Distantly, he is aware of how that sounds. Possessive and crazy. But he wants it. His mouth goes dry with it. 

Hannibal touches his cheek with the back of his fingers. “Yes, Will,” he says and walks back to his chair to sit down. “Finish your breakfast.”

They don’t speak for the rest of the meal.

-

Ava comes over later that day.

Apparently, Hannibal bought one of her paintings and she wanted to deliver it personally and thank him.

Will feels like a child as he listens to them hidden in the kitchen; Ava can't stay — they are only here for a couple more days and there’re things that need to be taken care of before they leave.

There is nothing in her voice that suggests she knows anything about them, just gratitude and kindness. She isn’t afraid. She hasn’t seen anything. Still a feeling of urgency overcomes Will when Hannibal opens the door for her. He steps closer, watches the relaxed way she holds herself as she kisses Hannibal's cheeks and wishes him all the best, promising to come visit the next time she is around. 

Will hopes it won’t come to that. 

Over her shoulder, Hannibal’s eyes find his. Whatever Hannibal sees in Will makes his face goes blank for a second, all the emotion draining from his features.  
Will can't look. He walks back into the kitchen, listens for signs of struggle and fight. Not that there would be any of that. Hannibal would be quick — he would need seconds — he would —

The door opens and closes. There are slow, measured footsteps coming closer. Then the engine of a car roars to life. 

Weight lifts off Will’s shoulders. He lets out a breath and tries to ignore the feeling of loss in his gut. 

Hannibal walks up to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You let her go,” Will says.

“Does it truly feel that way to you?”

It feels like they are plunging toward the hard surface of water again. But more than that, it feels like a missed opportunity. 

Will shakes his head.

Slowly, he becomes aware of the cold sweat along his hair line. 

-

Christmas comes and goes quickly. For the first time in years, Will isn’t alone for it — not that it changes anything on the actual day. He sleeps and eats, and watches Hannibal do the same. There is a tree in one corner of the living room, which _is_ new, and too much food for two people, but there’re no presents. 

At least, that’s what Will assumes until Hannibal leaves late in the morning. When he comes back he isn’t alone; Max limps inside after him. 

Ava's son lost interest and she doesn't have time for him. It would be too much work to take him with them anyway.

“When are they leaving?” Will asked. 

“They left last week.”

“So you claimed him?”

“So I claimed him.”

“And kept him away to surprise me.” 

Hannibal looks like he hadn’t meant for Will to figure that out. He nods, his skin flushed from the cold. “Do you want him?” he asks. “Or should I give him away?”

Max is whimpering at their feet, white fur of nervous energy. Will leans down to pet him. “The boy didn’t treat him well,” he says. “It'll take a while to make him forget.” Will is used to that, though. All his dogs had some kind of traumatic experience or another. He can deal with it.

He pets Max until he relaxes a little and tentatively starts exploring the house. Will lets him do it and goes out to look at the things Hannibal brought for Max. His bed and toys. Bowls. A half-empty bag of dog food that sits in the back of the trunk. All things he is used to already.

Good. 

He carries everything inside and finds Max sniffing at the furniture. He shows him his bed and water bowl. Later, he takes him out to roam around the fields close by.

When they return, Hannibal is waiting at the back door. 

“Worried we got lost?” Will asks.

“Yes,” Hannibal says simply. 

Will pets his belly on his way inside and makes sure Max finds his water bowl. 

“Is this an apology or a present?” he asks Hannibal on his way to the bathroom to wash up. 

Hannibal is standing behind him when he is done drying his face. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.” 

Hannibal touches his hair and jaw. “I want to draw you,” he says.

Will hums. “I remember being naked the last time you mentioned this.”

In the living room, he sees that Hannibal must've had something similar in mind: the couch is pulled up close to the fire place, partially draped with a white sheet. 

They sit down opposite each other and Will starts undressing.

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

The attention Hannibal gives him makes Will conscious of every one of his movements, which is ridiculous; Hannibal knows every inch of his body, and yet Will isn't sure what to do with his arms, or where to look. In the end, he slumps into one corner of the couch and lets his limbs relax with a sigh. He spreads his knees wide, puts one hand on his belly, the other on the back of the couch.

Hannibal nods and starts drawing. 

In the silence, the scratch of pen on paper is loud, interrupted only by the crackle of wood as it burns. Max sniffs around the room before settling in his bed. After a while, it starts snowing. 

Will's heart lurches in his chest. He knows he doesn’t deserve this, but he won’t give it up now that he knows what it can feel like. “Don't do this again,” he tells Hannibal. “Do you understand? Don't do it just to see what I can do. You know by now.”

Hannibal presses his lips together and doesn’t look up from his work.

“I don't know what I would do if they found us.” It's a truth Will has only recently admitted to himself. Saying it out loud feels like falling. He lets Hannibal see all of it anyway. “Do you understand?” he asks again.

“Yes, Will,” Hannibal says, finally looking up from the scratch book in his hands. “I understand.”

“Good.”

Hannibal holds his gaze for a while, warm and affectionate. Then he starts drawing again. He seems particularly interested in Will’s hand on his belly, almost touching his scar. The color in his cheeks rises slowly, his temples start to glisten with sweat, and Will is reminded that they haven’t touched each other since that morning in the kitchen. 

He remembers asking Hannibal not to touch himself and wonders if Hannibal kept his word. The thought that he might have, makes his body shiver. Desire blooms in his belly, settles heavily over him. He takes a deep breath, trying to stir his thoughts away from it. 

“You just wanted to stare,” he says when Hannibal’s gaze drops lower. 

“There was no ulterior motive in my request,” Hannibal says, squirming in his chair, and Will has to close his eyes. 

“Sure,” he says, smiling. “I don't mind, though,” he admits after a moment of silence. The honesty feels good. They haven't been this honest with each other before — or at least Will hadn’t been. It's a brand-new feeling, white hot in his chest. 

When he opens his eyes, Hannibal is smiling back at him. 

Will takes another deep breath and slowly but surely, his body relaxes again. The peace that comes with it reminds him of his dream, of standing knee-deep in a calm stream. 

“I-I have this dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

“It’s different. I’m-I’m not afraid. I’m the dark thing that people fear.” 

“How does that make you feel?”

Will rolls his eyes but only slightly. Everything would be easier if he knew. “I’m not sure,” he says. “If I asked you to kill someone, would you do it?” 

“Yes,” Hannibal says without hesitation.

“What if I ask you to kill one of us. Or both of us.”

“I’m not going to kill you. And I’m not going to kill myself for you.” Hannibal smiles at him. “You’d have to do that yourself.”

Hannibal's skin turns crimson before Will’s eyes, drenched in blood. Will watches helplessly before he blinks the memories away.

“Is that something you still want?” Hannibal asks. 

Will shakes his head.

“I must admit I enjoy this more than I thought possible.” Hannibal fixes him with a steady gaze. “Occupying your thoughts. Eating your brain and heart in a different way.”

“I gorged myself on yours.”

“Good,” Hannibal says. “Did you want me to kill her?”

“Yes and no,” Will says. “I didn’t want her to see. I didn’t want her here, but she didn’t deserve to die.”

“Would you have done it anyway?” Hannibal asks. “To protect me? To protect us?” 

It would’ve been the most selfish thing Will has ever done. Apart from convincing Jack of his plan to transfer Hannibal. He pictures it; a vast sea of blood, their hands warm from it. This house no longer a haven of tranquility. The walls seeing everything, whispering at night. “There is no need for a trail of bodies,” Will says. “You’re here, I’m here.” 

Hannibal stands and brings the drawing to Will for inspection. It’s an exact depiction of Will and his surroundings, but gentler somehow. The lines are precise yet soft. Will looks healthier and more content than the man that greets him in the mirror every morning. Hannibal's feelings for him are evident here — or maybe Will's own are clouding his judgement. 

“What do you see?” Hannibal asks. 

“Compassion.” 

“Compassion,” Hannibal says, sounding offended. 

“Fine,” Will says. “More than compassion.” He makes room for Hannibal on the couch, welcomes the warmth and strength of his body. “I don’t have to — I see it every day.” 

“Will,” Hannibal sighs. He takes the drawing and lets it flutter to the floor. The kiss he presses to Will's mouth is hard. It leaves Will breathless. He trembles from it, gasps for breath when Hannibal’s mouth finds his throat.

“You only want me for yourself,” Hannibal says. 

“Yes.”

Hannibal slides down his body, his mouth leaving a hot line from Will's neck to his navel. He is kneeling at Will's feet when he speaks again. “Not all of me,” he says. Something flickers across his face then, an emotion he can’t suppress quickly enough. It looks painful, he looks lost in the seconds it takes him to collect himself. 

Will takes one of Hannibal's hands and puts it to his scarred belly. “All of it,” he says. “All your cruelness. I just don't think you can stomach it anymore.” He puts his fingers in Hannibal's hair and strokes. “What would you do if they found us?”

“Kill everyone who came between us.” 

“And if they catch us?”

“Fate would bring us back together.”

“Fate,” Will murmurs. “I think that Jack wouldn't care if you’re dead or alive next time.”

Hannibal considers that, then presses his face to Will's hip, clearly not wanting to talk about it anymore. 

Will fists his hair, makes him look up. 

“You only want me for yourself,” Hannibal says again. 

“Don't you?”

Hannibal starts covering skin he can reach with kisses. 

“This place feels tainted now,” Will says, watching the curve of his eyelashes, the sharpness of his cheek bones. A gasp falls from his lips when Hannibal bites down on his hipbone.

“I can make you forget.”

“I know.”

Hannibal hums, his mouth occupied with sucking bruises into Will's skin. He hums again when Will presses up into his touch.

“Shall I make you forget?”

“Yes,” Will says. “But - your knees.” Hannibal is kneeling on the hard floor and with the mood he is in Will assumes it'll be a while before he gets up. Will pulls on his arm to get him to move, then forgets everything except the hot mouth on his cock. 

“Ohh,” he breathes and grabs onto Hannibal’s shoulders instead. 

Hannibal is careful with him but persistent. His mouth works until Will is hard which doesn’t take very long; Hannibal doesn't use his hands, keeps them clasped at the small of his back, and it drives Will wild, fills his cock out so quickly he feels dizzy from it. “Take your clothes off,” he gasps. He wants to see all that strength and violence at his feet. 

Under his control. 

Hannibal does as he is told. His skin flushed all the way down to his chest, his cock hangs heavily between his legs. When he goes down on Will again, the muscles in his arms are straining as if he would like to touch but is not allowing it, as if he is playing a game with himself. 

Again, the thought of him holding back just because Will asked him to is almost too much to bear. Will’s entire body stiffens, ready within minutes. He gasps out a warning, and isn't surprised when Hannibal stops. 

“Goddamn it,” he whispers.

Hannibal smiles up at him, lips wet and red. When he starts sucking him again, he watches the entire time, making sure he doesn't push too much, Will realizes. Making sure Will doesn’t come. He stops and starts again and again until Will’s cock turns an angry red. 

“I’m very close,” Will whispers the next time Hannibal gives him a break. It feels like he is about to come anyway, with nothing on him but cool air and Hannibal's gaze. His breath leaves him in a rush. His hips jerk up.

Hannibal bites his thigh. “I know,” he says. 

“Make me come,” Will breathes when Hannibal waits too long. “You make it so good.” He strokes the side of Hannibal’s face, his brow. “Never had someone take care of me like you do.” 

“No one knew you the way you let me know you.” 

Will nods. He drags his own nails up and down his thighs and doesn’t feel any pain at all. He does it again when he sees what it does to Hannibal — a shocked little gasp falls from his lips, his eyes go dark. 

“Can I have you?” Hannibal asks, voice thick. 

Will shivers. He is restless, wants to come right away but he wants Hannibal, too. “As hard as you can.”

Hannibal doesn’t obey. He goes slow and gentle, takes his time. 

The urgency of orgasm ebbs away. But only as long as it takes Will to get used to the stretch of muscles. Then he is back to fighting for control, fighting the end. “Yes,” he hisses and sinks his nails in Hannibal's back. “Come inside me this time.” 

Hannibal groans, his hips working harder. He is close already. Will can feel it in the desperate clutch of his hands. 

“Did you –” Will gasps. God, just the thought takes him almost over the edge. He bites at his own lip. “Did you touch yourself?” 

Hannibal shakes his head, and starts putting his back into it. The angle is good, the grip of his hands almost painful, his mouth hot on Will's neck. 

Will feels like he is losing his mind. 

Then, abruptly, Hannibal stops. A single sob leaves his mouth when he comes. 

Will is desperate afterwards, pushes at Hannibal's shoulders and pulls at his hair. He doesn't know what he wants. “Hannibal,” he gasps and Hannibal finally lifts off him and pulls out.

Will’s hands shake as he reaches down past his throbbing cock. He is wet and sensitive where Hannibal has fucked him. His fingers slide in easily.

“This is the first time—”

Hannibal groans and palms his spent cock. “Will, please.”

“It's true,” Will says and Hannibal yanks his hand away so he can instead bury his face between Will's legs. He licks and sucks and Will closes his eyes against the sharp brightness of pleasure. He pulls Hannibal up when he is about to come, puts his cock between his lips and watches him swallow. 

In the silence that follows, he floats, only aware of his body where Hannibal is touching him.

“The Chesapeake Ripper doesn't kill out of compulsion,” Will says after a while.

Hannibal’s head is pressed to Will's chest, his body a warm heavy weight on top of him, anchoring him. 

“You don’t have to do it. You choose to do it.”

“What will you choose?”

“This.”

“Forever?”

Will grins up at the ceiling. “For as long as you want me.”

“Forever,” Hannibal says against his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing ever happens in this fic, except lots of sex.


	9. Chapter 9

The bone-chilling cold of January makes them move downstairs. No heater they have is strong enough to fight it, which they figure out the hard way one night, waking up with their teeth chattering and limbs rigid. 

Hannibal lights the fire as Will brings down blankets and pillows. They drag the mattress down together while Max watches curiously, milling around their feet. He even tries jumping up on it once they put it in place, and Hannibal, even though he wouldn't admit it, looks like he is considering letting him get away with it. He got used to having him around more easily than Will had expected. Will guesses it's the time they spent together, the one week where they were each other's secret. 

He tries to hide his grin and puts Max’s bed closer to theirs.

“The bedframe can wait until the morning,” Will tells Hannibal as they lie down. Close to the fire place and each other, they warm up quickly.

“Not bad,” Will whispers. He is starting to feel his toes again. 

Hannibal agrees and moves closer still.

-

The mornings are different after that. Warm and slow. They sleep in more often. When Will is conscious enough to open his eyes, Hannibal has already fed the fire most of the days, and left Will with the task of walking Max. 

This morning is the same; Will is warm, Hannibal in bed with him, and Max's paws click on the wood floor, already up and waiting. 

Will stretches lazily and shifts until he can feel Hannibal against his back, warm and solid.

“Morning,” Hannibal whispers. He is careful not to bring their hips together. 

Will pushes his ass back until he can feel Hannibal's erection. He sighs. “How long has it been?”

“Nineteen days,” Hannibal says against his neck, his voice raspy from sleep. 

Will’s body responds to the desire he hears in it in no time. Nineteen days since Hannibal has come, since Will asked him not to again and Hannibal obeyed. It hasn't been that long for Will; Hannibal takes care of him whenever Will asks. Still, Will feels Hannibal’s need as if it were his own. 

He turns in Hannibal's arms and kisses his cheek. Under the blankets, he starts undressing him before Max's questioning bark interrupts them. Will pulls back. “Don't move,” he tells Hannibal. "Your-your hands.” He doesn't have to finish the sentence; Hannibal puts his hands on his chest, over the blanket. 

In the kitchen, Will opens the door for Max and swears. It's freezing cold. Even Max is reluctant to go out, so their walk doesn't take long. They go to the gate and back again, Max the first to hurry back inside to the warmth of the living room. 

Hannibal looks like he hasn't moved an inch. Will feels heat in his belly grow because he knows it's true. He smiles at him and rubs his hands together before taking his clothes off again and joining him under the blanket. 

Hannibal can’t look away from him. Whatever scenario he has come up with while Will was gone, it made him eager. Even as Will puts him on his belly, he turns his head to watch.

“I'm going to fuck you,” Will tells him unceremoniously. He wets his fingers with spit and touches his hole before leaning down to lick there instead. 

Hannibal jerks at first like it hurts but relaxes into it quickly. “Cruel,” he whispers and Will does it a bit harder, flicks his tongue faster. He makes him take it until Hannibal is loose, then sits up and reaches for the lube under the pillows. 

Hannibal makes constant noise as Will pushes his fingers inside; deep sighs and helpless gasps when Will rubs his prostate. He is sensitive. After a while, his thighs start jerking at every touch of Will's fingers. He tries to move away from it, and Will stops, pulls him up to his knees and presses his cock inside him instead.

Hannibal's body jerks. He reaches back, catching Will's hip in a swift motion, clawing at it. 

“Did I hurt you?” Will asks. He holds still, uncertain.

Hannibal shakes his head. His breath is loud. It takes a while until he finds his words. “Close,” he says and Will's hips roll forward involuntarily. 

God, fuck. 

“S-sorry,” he says and forces himself to slow down. Hannibal trembles under him, reaching an unsteady hand back to Will's thigh or hip again and again, as if he can't help himself, as if he is teetering on the edge, uncertain when the fall will come, or if he could stop it. 

Will wonders if Hannibal would push him off when he thought he was getting too close. It's a good time to remind him whose game they are playing. 

“I think you can come today,” Will says, “but it depends.”

“On what?”

“How good you can make me come,” Will says and stops moving altogether. 

An almost sickening surge of want twists in his gut. He sinks his nails in his own thighs and waits.

Hannibal shoots him a heated look over his shoulder, then hangs his head between his shoulders and starts moving on him. Hard. His breath is uneven. It doesn’t take long until he has to slow down, sweaty and gasping.

“Don't stop,” Will tells him, close himself.

Hannibal doesn't but he barely moves — just an inch up and down. 

“More,” Will says.

Hannibal grunts, a deep sound that Will feels in his chest.

“Hannibal,” Will warns him and even that seems to rile Hannibal up a little more; he tightens around Will, fists the sheet hard enough to pull it off the edges of the mattress. 

Trembling on Will. For him. Not moving because he knows if one of them falls, the other falls too.

Will’s heart throbs in his chest, a hot ache that mixes with the mounting pleasure in his gut. He catches Hannibal's hips in a bruising grip, pushes up on the next thrust, hard and fast, and Hannibal's entire body seizes up.

“Will,” he gasps and tries to lift off him. His hands fly down to Will's grip on his hips, then out to the headboard to brace himself, as if he knows there’s no escaping anymore.

A complete surrender.

Something inside Will shatters at the sight. His arms tighten around Hannibal, his hips jerking forward again and again. He feels like a wild, feral thing, only one thought on his mind. “Come on,” he growls in Hannibal's ear. 

Hannibal tightens around him the way he does when he is orgasming; in quick uncontrollable waves. A sound leaves his mouth that could have been Will's name but is unrecognizable among the whimpers that accompany it. 

“Yes,” Will hisses into his ear. He reaches down to pull the last of his climax from him, and finally lets go as well, falling into blinding pleasure that steals his breath away. He sees nothing but Hannibal, hears nothing but his voice.

In a way, he thinks, it has been like that for years. 

When he is capable of more than just gasping for air and clutching at Hannibal, he pulls out, slow and gentle. The sheets are a mess, but it was worth it. 

Hannibal is still trembling as they lie down, pressed together. After a while, Will leans up to look at his face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Hannibal says, his voice a hoarse whisper. 

“Next time I might not let you come.”

Hannibal nods. 

“Or I might want to try too.”

“Yes.”

Will kisses him and sits up. “I'll make breakfast.”

Hannibal's arms wrap around him and pull him back down. Things he can't say usually, he says with his clinging body now. It’s thrilling. 

“Okay,” Will say. “I'll make breakfast later.”

-

They don't last nineteen days. There is absolutely nothing to do except read and sleep, and under the sheets, their hands wander. It's new, having to hold back. New and exciting. 

Barely a week later, Will is sobbing into his pillow with pleasure. He realizes he'll have to make Hannibal stop or admit defeat.

Not that he would mind right now.

Hannibal has two fingers inside him, breathing like a beast down his neck. 

Will pushes back.

“Can you fuck me and not come?”

Hannibal presses his fingers rougher inside him. For a breathless moment it's almost too much, then he pulls them out. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Will believes him. He still wants to watch him try, and turns over to face him, looks him in the eyes as spreads his legs. “Fuck me,” he says.

Hannibal is starved for eye contact usually, for Will saying his name. Now he can't take any of it. He closes his eyes as he pushes in and doesn't open them again. 

It's slow, controlled.

Will wants more than that, so he gasps Hannibal's name louder than usually, lets his breath out in shivering whimpers. Soon he can't control that anyway, too far gone himself. By the time he can't take Hannibal's raptured expression or the measured thrusts anymore, Hannibal is close, too. Will sees it in the sweat on his skin, the tremor in his arms.

“Harder,” he says.

Hannibal bites at his own lip and sinks his nails into Will's thighs. He doesn't look when Will comes on him. 

“Let me see,” Will says as soon as he is done. He slides off Hannibal and leans up on an elbow. 

Hannibal is hard and wet, the head of his cock a deep red. It looks almost painful. 

Will touches him with careful fingers, which seems to be anything but soothing — Hannibal jerks away from it then slowly into it. Always wanting more. Even if it's torture. 

“Lie down,” Will tells him. He gets a towel, cleans himself and then Hannibal — his straining arms and heaving belly, his jerking cock. He is gentle, strokes the sweaty hair on his chest. 

“Will,” Hannibal says. 

Will puts the towel away and holds him, traces the vein along the underside of his cock, spreads the precome still gathering at the tip. 

Hannibal arches under his touch. “Everything to your liking?” he asks. 

“Yes.” Will smiles up at him and stops touching him. 

It takes a while until Hannibal's erection subsides. Will feels it pressing against his thigh the entire time. Hannibal doesn't ask for anything, just waits patiently. 

After dinner, they have drinks. 

“You are wondering why I am agreeing to this,” Hannibal says. Max is lying on the couch between them, snoozing. Their hands touch on his warm body. 

“I know why you’re doing it.” The satisfaction that comes off Hannibal despite the lack of release is palpable each time. “I'm wondering how far you’re willing to go.”

“As far as you’ll go,” Hannibal says. “I'm leashed, aren't I? Where you pull, I go.”

Will considers that. He thinks of the Lecter estate, of Florence and the Dragon. “You are the one pulling.” Will goes along. For years now.

“I believe that's not entirely true anymore.” 

“Fine,” Will says. “I follow either way.”

When he looks over to him, Hannibal has moved closer and put his arm along the backrest of the couch. A soft smile on his lips as he watches Will. He looks enamored. “You do,” he says and lifts a hand to Will's cheek, touching with his fingertips.

Will feels shy all of a sudden, which is ridiculous given their history, or even the last three months. He looks away and feels his heart starting to pound as Hannibal leans closer and kisses him, soft and slow. His cheek first, then the corner of his mouth. 

“You follow,” Hannibal says, his voice deep and low in Will's ear. His lips trail a short path from Will's cheek to his mouth but never further down. He kisses him until Will's mouth feels hot and bruised, until Will turns his head out of it and lifts his chin, wanting Hannibal's mouth on his neck, burning for it. 

Hannibal doesn't obey. He takes Will's face in both hands and slowly presses another kiss to his mouth.

“What're you doing?” Will whispers against his lips.

“Kissing you,” Hannibal whispers back. He catches Will's wrist when Will tries to pull him closer, first one then the other. They pull and push, shifting on the couch and waking Max in the process who doesn't look impressed. He jumps off the couch a moment later. 

A short laugh falls from Will's mouth as they watch him snuggle into his bed. 

“Do you miss your dogs?” Hannibal asks all of a sudden. He is still holding Will's wrists. It should feel awkward but it doesn't.

“Yes." 

“Would you miss me?”

Will is back in his house in Wolf Trap, waking up with his entire body hurting and Hannibal sitting at his bedside. He had tried so desperately to convince himself of being someone he wasn't. It’d been cold then too, colder in his memory of it than it really was, but there had been snow. Will sees Hannibal in it, on his knees, watching him, knowing. He remembers the glaring light and noise of police on his property, then the silence of his house, the anger that came later at not feeling satisfied with the outcome. 

“I missed you when you left. And I missed you when Jack took you away.”

“Then the answer would be yes, I believe,” Hannibal says.

Will smiles at the blatant need in Hannibal's question. Ridiculous. He looks him in the eyes. “Yes,” he says. “I would miss you.”

A smile spreads across Hannibal's face. “I have survived three years by trusting that I know you better than you know yourself,” he says. “Trusting you would come back.”

“You were right,” Will says. “How does that make you feel?”

“Ecstatic,” Hannibal says and kisses Will until there are no thoughts left in Will's head. 

“Will you help me with dinner?” he says after breaking their kiss.

Will nods. 

In the kitchen, he washes his hands and waits at the counter. “Tell me what to do.”

Hannibal doesn't for a while. He watches Will instead, a calculating gleam in his eyes.

“Would you like that?” Will asks. “Telling me what to do. Not just here?”

“We can try anything you want,” Hannibal says. He has a knife in his hands and his sleeves rolled up, making Will sweat. When he comes over to Will, he does it slowly.

Will grabs the edge of the counter after the first kiss to his neck, clutches at it for every other. The blade of the knife is cold against his throat. He gasps and presses harder into Hannibal's chest — a crazy move given that the same hands that hold him close now gutted him once.

“I thought about cutting all your clothes off your body,” Hannibal whispers against his neck. He taps the knife against Will's Adam's Apple, then against his belly, against his scar.

“Just-just my clothes?” Will gasps.

“I have come to understand that killing you wouldn't satisfy me.”

“Not talking about killing,” Will says. “Have you thought about tasting me?”

“Of course. I came close to it once.” The knife slowly moves from Will's belly to his chest. “I dreamed about it often,” Hannibal says. “In that dream I chase you.”

“How predictable,” Will says. “Was I one of your victims?”

Hannibal chuckles. “You put your claws in my heart once I caught you.”

“Good,” Will says, then gets distracted by Hannibal's mouth on him. The kisses grow harder and hotter, making Will greedy to feel Hannibal everywhere. He pushes back against him and the knife falls to the counter with a loud clatter.

Hannibal’s shivery gasp seems just as loud. “Will.” He holds him as if they really are at the end of a chase. 

“Do you want me to run?” Will says. He pictures it; the exhaustion that would come from it, the adrenalin rushing through their veins. He can feel Hannibal against his ass, getting harder.

“Another time perhaps,” Hannibal says. “Put your hands on the counter.”

Will slowly takes his hands from where he had been clutching the edge of the counter and puts them flat on it. He is instantly reminded of the last time they had sex here, and his body responds with a raw surge of arousal. He spreads his legs, braces himself, and waits. 

Hannibal has something else in mind, though. He unfastens Will's pants, pulls them down to his knees, and nudges Will's legs together again. “Stay like this,” he says. 

Will does, with his eyes closed and his breath coming quicker. He listens to Hannibal opening and closing drawers, and feels himself shaking in anticipation. 

When Hannibal touches him again, his hand is wet and slippery. He pushes it between Will's thighs and cheeks, along his balls, then wraps it around Will's cock and presses his own erection between his thighs. 

A gasp falls from his mouth, and Will remembers that it's been days since he’s come. He swallows the moan stuck in his throat. “You can-you can fuck me,” he pants, the desire to make it good for Hannibal overwhelming. 

“Like this,” Hannibal whispers. “Please, Will.”

This time Will can't keep the shuddering moan to himself. His face flushes, even more so when Hannibal starts moving against him with urgency. His body is pushed forward with each thrust, shaking from it, the muscles in his arms bulging as he pushes back. On the counter, his sweaty hands slip after a while, but Hannibal doesn't stop, doesn't even wait for him to move back into position.

Will gets wet from it, pants out his desire and holds on. Hannibal’s hand around him tightens and it's almost too much all of a sudden. Too harsh, pulling whimpers from him.

“Please, Will,” Hannibal says against his neck. He keeps pressing his cock against Will's balls, against his hole. “Come me with me,” he whispers. “I have waited so long.”

Will goes down to his elbows when he feels Hannibal come, the heat of it running down his thighs. He can't stop his own orgasm after that. It leaves him panting, dragged out of him too quickly, his mind overriding his body once more. He looks down at the mess on his skin, Hannibal's wet hand around him, his cock still pressed up against him, and a final shudder runs through his limbs. “Fuck,” he says, his arms giving out at last. He presses his cheek against the cool counter and breathes.

They are quiet afterwards. Hannibal gets a wet towel and cleans them both. When he is done, he takes Will's face in both hands and kisses him so hard it hurts. 

“It's okay,” Will says against his mouth because there is nothing else left to say, nothing between them that the other doesn't know already. He kisses back just as hard, holds onto Hannibal as tight. “It‘s okay.”

-

A couple days later, the wind brings in a storm. 

Will carries firewood inside and stacks it beside the fireplace until his fingers are numb and stiff. In the kitchen, Hannibal makes sure they have enough food.

After closing all the shutters and securing the backdoor, all they have to do is wait. 

The worst of it hits after midnight. 

They are lying in bed, both awake but neither moving, cocooned in a blanket. Will holds Max close to his chest and has Hannibal pressed against his back. He is warm. Sleep pulls on his senses despite the howling of the wind outside that grows louder. 

Max’s whine pulls him from it. 

“Shhh,” Will whispers against his head. He hugs him closer still and pats him, making sure Max knows he is not alone. He is learning a lot, but sometimes he goes back to old habits. It’ll take a while until he trusts them completely, but Will is used to it. He remembers the time Buster bit him, the times he collected scratches. A fond smile spreads on his face. He wonders what his dogs are doing, if Molly kept them, or if she gave them away. 

The picture he painted would’ve made her want to keep them — Will, sacrificing himself to rid the world of Hannibal Lecter. Even if the lack of bodies convinced her that something else must’ve happened, Will is still certain that she imagines something horrific. Not this. Not a warm bed and a sense of safety and clarity he can’t remember ever feeling before. 

Molly kept his dogs, he is sure, just like he is sure that Jack and Alana and Bedelia don’t find sleep easily these days. Hannibal and he haunt them, he realizes, like monsters from old stories and nightmares, alive in their fears, alive because of them.

As if sensing his wandering thoughts, Hannibal presses a kiss to Will's neck. His voice is rough when he speaks. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Will says and closes his eyes. 

-

They don't leave the house for three days, and when they venture out on the morning of fourth day, the world feels brand new. Everything is covered in a thick layer of fresh snow that glistens in the sun. 

Will stops in the middle of the field and turns around to look at the trails they left; his and Hannibal’s footsteps, the zigzag line of Max’s enthusiastic explorations. 

“It’ll remain for a while,” Hannibal says. "It’ll stay cold."

“Tired of it yet?” Will asks, squinting against the sun. 

Hannibal shakes his head. “Our surroundings are irrelevant, as long as the company is good.”

“Are you saying you didn’t mind your prison cell?”

Hannibal smiles at him. 

They go further out, to the spot where they can see the city close by. The world is quiet. It feels like they are the only two people left in it. 

It’s a comforting thought. 

Will takes a deep breath. “I want to see what this place looks like in the spring,” he says. 

Hannibal is standing at his side. “And then some place warmer?” he asks. 

“And then,” Will starts saying and stops, takes another deep breath. He shrugs. “I don’t know. We’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally done! Sorry this took so long & thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~[tumblr](https://ammetiis.tumblr.com) ~~  
>  [tumblr](https://aametis.tumblr.com)


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